rtCamp’s first office was in my small apartment in Koregaon Park, Pune. In the evening, I used to go for a walk with my co-founders for a tea break (चाई सुट्टा). During one such walk, I remember a conversation with Radhe where he asked me if — back in early 2009 — a WordPress-only business can become big enough to employ 100 people!
I never doubted the potential of WordPress even back in 2009, and today there are likely more than a hundred WordPress-only businesses around the world, large WordPress-only companies are obvious.
Last week, our team size crossed 100+ full-time rtCampers spread across 5 countries. It took us 12 years to reach this milestone.
We got off to a quick start, scaling up our team to the first 40 employees in 2011, about two years into the business. From there, we took a detour from being a small publishing and design agency to a WordPress consulting business, and later completely focusing on enterprise-grade WordPress only.
In each major shift, our total headcount stayed almost the same. We were at team size 60 when COVID started. That was like net 20 addition in 9 years. Then we added 40+ Good People to our team in the last 15 months.
During each pivot, some people decided to stick around, often reskilled for new challenges, while others decided to explore outside. As we were still perfecting the recipe for enterprise WordPress, slow team size growth wasn’t a concern. For us, it has always been quality over quantity.
Being bootstrapped can make you laid back sometimes. We never had any set target for team size growth until the pandemic started. On the one hand, we lost considerable work. On the other hand, many ex-rtCampers got in touch looking to drop ex from their tag and be rtCampers again. While trying to navigate the two conflicting forces, we decided for the first time to expand our core agency business and be less adventurous about product bets.
As many WordPress businesses can relate to it, the tech industry turned out to be one of those that have been experiencing higher growth both in terms of work and revenues during the pandemic.
We hope that the tech industry continues to play an agent of digital transformation in the post-pandemic world. And riding on that hope, we aim to create another 100+ jobs in the coming 3 years, proudly Powered by WordPress.
To all our clients and partners, thank you for trusting us with your work and being instrumental in our growth. 🙏
