How NERDZ LAB was born?

This is a story about the dream and how it came true. In 2017, twin brothers, Vasyl and Volodymyr Khmil, decided to find a company that would develop original ideas into extraordinary projects never seen before.

Read on to find out how they got started and how their company, NERDZ LAB  was born.

Content:

1. The beginning of the story of NERDZ LAB
2. Forming a team of nerds
3. Rebranding NERDZ LAB
4. Our first office
5. Co-founders
6. Plans for the future 

The beginning of the story of NERDZ LAB

Why did you choose IT as your vocation? And why did you decide to start your own company in the end, instead of working for an existing company, when there are numerous successful IT companies in Lviv? Wasn’t it scary?

Volodymyr: While studying in high school, we had a precise image of who we wanted to be, which was programmers. Thus, we didn’t even check out other options. However, we were quite scrupulous in choosing which niche to focus on, as well as researching the relevance of each at that time. Therefore, Vasyl started as an iOS developer while I cracked the C++ rock.

And that’s when we faced the problem of how complicated it was for C++ developers to find their first project — there were very few projects out there. Well, there were some, but those were rather big projects which would never be trusted, entirely or in parts, by a small young company, not to mention to an individual person.

So, I decided to change my niche and tried being an Android developer. I worked a bit in the field, but, not having found a satisfying job, I switched to iOS as well.

We concentrated on intensively growing our technical expertise and looked for any opportunity to get hired for our first project, so we could start making our dreams come true.

Vasyl: While studying at university, Volodymyr and I were working at a big IT company. But we realized quickly that it wasn’t our cup of tea. We wanted to found our own small company with a friendly team that took on interesting projects. Still, our experience with a big IT company was a good opportunity for conscientious learning, experiments, and, of course, a trigger for searching for our own reliable team. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we decided to give it a go.

We had to work really hard. On top of our studies at university and the jobs we had at that time, we added self-employment. Volodymyr signed up with UpWork and soon the projects started to come. Simultaneously, we started building a team and we soon registered our own company, which we called Bindex. Together, we were still cultivating our UpWork accounts, because we understood that to build our own business, we had to start small, meaning work for free. Our new company’s first paid project earned us $15 for around 700 hours of work. That ended up being another trigger to work toward growing a company. Each project, even the smallest, was of great value to us in terms of both experience and self-development.

Forming a team of nerds

What was your first team like?

Vasyl: There were seven people in total. They were our friends and are still part of the team. We’re childhood friends, the kind of friends who usually go to the same school, even the same class, and do the same work. Thus, we have many more things in common besides our jobs. We share memories, interests, and even dreams. It was a smart decision to start from scratch side by side with time-tested people. However, working with friends was both easier and harder than working with a team of complete strangers. On the one hand, we trusted each other and knew that whatever obstacles we encountered, we would find a way out. On the other hand, the responsibility we felt to make sure we all succeeded was extreme, which, fortunately, resulted in diligent work on each project.

Rebranding NERDZ LAB

What was the reason for changing the name of the company?

Volodymyr: Although Bindex seemed to sound impressive, it didn’t describe who we were. We were young with our entire lives ahead, so we wanted something simpler and more creative, but still descriptive to potential customers and future colleagues. We’d been pondering the name for a while and NERDZ LAB was the one which, as soon as it sprang to mind, sounded perfect, because we’re “nerds” and “geeks” ready to conduct creative experiments in a so-called lab. We’re the ones who are ready to work conscientiously on even the most difficult tasks and solve them. This is our goal, embraced by each of us.

In 2020, we immersed ourselves, along with our marketer Natalie Bilynska, in launching our rebrand. We updated our logo, changed the way we write “NERDZ LAB”, and expressed our corporate identity with unique colors. 

See also: #born_to_be_nerd – Meet Natalie Bilynska

Our first office

What made you realize it was time to quit your stable job at the big IT company, rent office space, and become self-employed?

Vasyl: Well, there was no choice. The thing is that big projects came along and we had to make sacrifices. We stopped studying for our master’s degree. But it was worth it, we have no regrets. The five companies we’d worked for had several negatives, which we knew our own company would never have. We decided early on that we would never neglect deadlines and we would have low employee turnover.

We wanted to create a team that valued those principles and would get on really well. As for the master’s degree, that was a dead end. We weren’t learning anything that would be in any way useful for work, so our decision was incontrovertible. With the extra time we now had on our hands, we invested in educating ourselves and working on projects to gain essential experience. We set our priorities, and we think we set them correctly!

In the beginning, we worked in cafes and coworking spaces for our projects, Eventually, we rented a small room with a table in the middle, which was hard to call an office. But everything big starts small.

Volodymyr: At that moment we began feeling confident in our abilities and in our team’s. We applied for a big project, and then in 2018, rented a bigger, more comfortable workspace, which became our first real office. There’s a big terrace and, what’s most important, everyone on the team has their own workspace. That’s how the company was finally born, and it now comprises 80+* awesome nerds, as of October 2022. (*Editors note: 42 as of March 2021)

See also: Our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

How do you find people for the team? What are the main characteristics you pay attention to when hiring new people?

Vasyl: Our company is like a family. That’s the main criterion. We start looking for a new employee by asking each member of the team whether they know somebody — a friend or an acquaintance appropriate for a position. Frankly speaking, this was the genuine key to finding the really great people we work with now. But there are some other characteristics we also take into account when looking for a new employee. We need to find out if the person is one of us. Technical skills are always important, but we also pay attention to a sense of humor, stress resilience, and a desire for self-improvement. That last one is paramount and we try to foster this in every possible way.

Co-founders

I know that currently there are four co-owners of the company. Tell us about that.

Volodymyr: Yes, recently Volodymyr Vrublevskyi, became a co-owner of the company. He’s not only a co-owner but also a co-founder of NERDZ LAB. He’s our friend and he fully embraces our values, goals, and ideas. He’s one of the best iOS developers; his title is Head of Delivery. 

We also asked Andriy Tsebak to join our team as a co-owner during a corporate event on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the company. Andriy deals with the commercial development of NERDZ LAB and his title is Head of Business Development and Sales. He’s an excellent specialist who embodies the culture of our company. 

Plans for the future

More than 5 years have already passed since the day you founded the company and made the dream come true. What is your vision for the company? Share your plans for the future of NERDZ LAB.

Vasyl: We have a great team of professionals who have great prospects. We enjoy mentoring our team. We’re developers from Toptal and have a lot to teach anyone who’s interested. We invest many resources so that we, together with our people, can produce quality products.

Volodymyr: NERDZ LAB is a human-driven company that subscribes to the Scandinavian management model; we understand that employees do their best when they have passion and curiosity, and work in an inspiring environment.

See also: Scandinavian management model: NERDZ LAB Experience

In the near future, we’ll continue our successful work on the mobile and the mobile and web tech stack. We’re also launching startups — “SCOPO” and “Visitory.” In February 2022, with friends and partners, our team launched a Ukrainian-language application for meditation called “Spokiy“. We plan to keep improving it to help Ukrainians who need mental health support.

We’ll take part in the Web Summit startup program with our SCOPO project. And of course, as true nerds, we always seek opportunities for continuing education. We’re enrolled in the Genesis StartUp Academy 2.0 together with Meta. We’ve reached our goal of growing our company to 50+ employees, and now we plan to expand our team to 100+ developers.