CobbleWeb Big Picture: Company Review and Vision 2025

There are two well-known aphorisms that come to mind when you evaluate how well a company is doing: “You’re only as good as your last performance.” and “Fate favours the prepared mind.” Our recent team retreat was the ideal opportunity for CEO Ramdane Mir to address both aspects as part of the company’s Big Picture: what have we achieved so far and how does that set us up for the next phase of CobbleWeb’s evolution?

“Before I chat about our plans going forward, it may be worth recapping what brought us to this moment. When Paul and I founded CobbleWeb in 2012, it was to provide a more user-focused and business success-oriented development partner for digital entrepreneurs. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the hoard of agencies out there that simply churn out cookie-cutter products with low chances of success.

We were lucky (or good 😁) enough to start off with a number of anchor clients that have done incredibly well. FanPass generates millions of euros; MobyPark partnered with a leading Dutch parking operator; SoShop, an award-winning neobank and customer loyalty network, was acquired by European fuel conglomerate, AVIA. We also did some interesting G2B work for Atos, the multinational IT conglomerate, as well as Trelleborg, a world leader in polymer solutions used in industries like aerospace.

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From the beginning it was clear that a superior client focus with clear transparent processes would be key to growing the company. We managed to build a strong reputation supported by the referrals and performance of our existing clients. Nestify, for example, was referred to us by FanPass. Vittle, which has just launched their MealMaps app, was impressed by our case studies and technical expertise. Check out our Clutch reviews to see what they say about us.

You’ve probably noticed that many of those early clients operate online marketplaces. Around 2019 we realised that we had to refine CW’s market positioning and value proposition. Otherwise we risked stagnating among all the other jack-of-all-trades agencies. To put that into perspective, just in the UK there are more than 24,000 software development companies.

After a lot of research and client feedback we decided to position ourselves as experts in custom online marketplace development. Firstly, we already had a competitive advantage with in-depth experience of helping our clients build successful marketplace platforms. Secondly, there was a gap in the market with many marketplace entrepreneurs frustrated by so-called marketplace builders like Sharetribe and Magento. The complexity of the marketplace model and unique needs of marketplace users make it very difficult to DIY or build something based on a pre-existing template.

The other problem was that most marketplace solutions provide the technology, but offer no process to help map out how the technology should support the business goals. Even worse, nobody was helping entrepreneurs to check if there was a business to be built at all, before they wasted time and money on concepts that nobody wanted.

That is why we don’t sell our clients a specific technology, but rather offer them an evidenced-based, user-focused, and product-led framework that has proven to increase their chances of success. Now you see why discovery and the iterative (build-measure-learn) loop play such an important role in our work.

Our custom marketplace positioning worked extremely well. Qualified leads increased by 600% within the first two years. This year-to-date alone, we’ve had more than forty new client enquiries worth a potential £1.5 – 3 million , which is pretty good for a highly-specialised B2B service.

Our existing clients are also extremely loyal – FanPass and Nestify, for example, have consistently increased their CW budgets every year. New clients like Vittle are already planning their next phase with us. Based purely on business metrics we’ve had another great year of growth with a 30% increase in revenue.

Year-on-year revenue: +30%

We noticed a couple of trends though. 70 – 80 percent of enquiries are from people with budgets under £25,000 and little-to-zero validation of their concept. They simply do not have the funds for a long-term custom marketplace project. It would also be unethical to take their money in exchange for a template-based platform with low chances of success, like many unscrupulous agencies do.

Another common theme is startups that want us to help them fix the mess or dead-end that off-the-shelf (turnkey) solutions got them into. That was why FanPass initially reached out to us. Affordable Art Fair, an art marketplace, contacted us after Magento proved to be difficult to adapt, almost impossible to scale, and the slow site speed hurt their UX. 

70 – 80 % of enquiries are from people with budgets under £25,000

ShareWise – our new PaaS solution for marketplace startups

But that doesn’t mean all those limited-budget concepts are worthless. They simply need a low-risk, but effective, way to be tested. And that is how ShareWise was born.

What is ShareWise?

We are using Fastify (backend) and Next.js (frontend) to develop a dedicated library of modular components that can be combined in a plug-and-play fashion to build online marketplaces. It covers all the most common marketplace features, such as user -, order-, product- and store management, shipping, payment processing, etc.

Why is ShareWise such a game-changer?

Quality is baked into its DNA. ShareWise is the product of more than a decade’s experience with complex user flows, deep technical and business insights, and advanced problem solving. Every module has its origin in a high-performance marketplace. The component-based architecture makes it highly customisable and scalable, which sets it apart from template-based ecommerce platforms like Sharetribe, CS-Cart or Shopify.

From an engineering point of view this component-base architecture offers many benefits: much faster rollouts, flexibility, parallel workstreams, and easier maintenance and updates. For example, all the components that make up modules can be overridden at the project level and modules can override components between them. Extensibility is built in as well – by using GraphQL we can add new functionality without needing to replace components.

In a nutshell, ShareWise means less frustration for the engineers implementing it and a high-quality, tried-and-tested product for our clients.

Last, but not least, ShareWise gives CobbleWeb two distinct business advantages. It offers scalable recurring revenue and it widens the top of our client funnel. We are basically building a client pipeline with ShareWise as a lower-cost low-risk entry point for their projects, which can be customised and scaled as they validate their initial idea. 

It truly is a win-win all around!

Project progress: Our ShareWise team (Alex, Caner, and Aref) have already completed the first batch of modules for the MVP version.

So that is where we are at. Now let’s take a look at next year.

Vision 2025

We have big plans for 2025 to take CobbleWeb to the next level. This year was all about putting the technology roadmap in place, growing our team, and refining our brand positioning, business strategies, and work processes. Next year we want to expand our marketplace development ecosystem as follow: 

1. Launch an MVP version of ShareWise by summer 2025. It will be made available to select clients to get feedback for a wider release. This will eventually be followed by implementation, integration and support services.
2. Additional services for our clients, such as advanced data analytics, data modelling, market research, product – and growth marketing services, and go-to-market strategies.
3. There will also be an increased emphasis on innovation outside of ShareWise:
   • Engineering support tools
   • Synthetic data for business model simulations
   • AI and ML opportunities for internal and client use

Team goals

To make those goals a reality we are going to need the right teams in place. Since last year we’ve grown our teams by another 30% to twenty people. Currently we have one team focused on custom development and our existing clients, while another team is working on ShareWise. 

Next year we need to triple our teams to support both growth in custom clients as well as ongoing ShareWise development and customer support. This of course means plenty of opportunity for existing engineers to establish themselves either as tech leads or specialists, e.g. in DevOps. We will also be recruiting more product managers, QA engineers, UX designers and data engineers. So if you know anyone who is a good fit for the role and our culture, point them our way.

As part of our goal to establish CobbleWeb as the employer of first choice within our niche, we will continue to refine our team feedback mechanisms and company communication. One initiative will be a team hub with articles and information about our internal processes, philosophies, news and events. Aref has already done a great Q&A on his CW journey and we hope to add more in future. 

Last, but not least, I would like to thank everyone for their contributions to CobbleWeb’s success thus far. It has been fantastic to see the professional growth in many of your careers. Paul and I are excited to work with you all, not only to build a bigger and better CobbleWeb, but also to help you reach your professional goals.”