Our 6 years building a company✨
The story behind Bloco
Bloco started to operate in 2015, but we incorporated only one year later. Before that Cláudia and Sérgio acted as solo contractors.
Our intention from day one was to work in a niche technology. And Android was our choice, because Android's fast growth, spreading all over the world with new and better devices and the improvement of development tools over the last years made it easy for us to choose our path.
Despite this, most of the Android applications are not as good as they could be. Offering a tailored Android experience is a sure way to make a product stand out. And that's the kind of software we build.
We're a multi-disciplinary team, specialised in designing and developing Android products. We create a close and trustworthy relationship with our clients. Evidence of that is our client portfolio with 12 clients and several projects, this year with a special incidence on social development and human rights, connected with open source technologies and decentralization.
Our mission is to use the time we have as wisely as we can, be exemplary to one another and give back to our community.
Client Work
The Dr. Bill - RBC Medical Billing team keeps growing, and we're still part of their Android development team. They have been with us the longest, as the product keeps expanding to more and more health professionals in Canada.
Stationhead is thriving. The Android app we've worked on was released. Stations have been collecting more and more listeners. Some high-profile music artists have dropped in on some shows. Recently, even some Portuguese celebrities have started using the app as well. Forbes and Billboard featured Stationhead.
Awala (known previously as Relaynet)
After almost one year, it's good to see all the work concluded. We developed a range of 3 apps, starting by Courier, Gateway and Ping.
Awala is a project trying to restore connectivity when the Internet has been cut off. This is an open source project that won the first place at the Mozilla Builders Open Lab.
Internal Projects
Inspired by the positive app reviews, we decided to update Large Text, making it more accessible. We've been meaning to explore the accessibility component of our apps and this was the perfect excuse. Large Text is an app with in app-purchases, meaning the user is able to buy a pack of themes. We've been earning around 7€/ per month.
Caderno remains our top app with 92,082 active users in 134 countries (top country Brazil) and a rating of 4.4 ⭐️. Caderno has a download size of 60.5 KB and still works on Android 8.1. This was our first app to be launched, the naming and all the years on Google Play contributes for its longevity and numbers.
This last year the Stacks Foundation launched a grant program. Because our Android app, Envelop, was built on Stacks, we decided to apply and make the Android experience ever better. We proposed to build an official native Stacks Auth app named Circles. This apps allows users to authenticate and access to multiple apps, this means users control their own identity and data and interact safely with the apps in the Stacks world.
Internal Affairs
Hiring
Last year we doubled our team, although we want to keep a small team last year we hired two more members.
Germana she's our Operations Manager in charge of all the operations in Bloco. Our copywriter and translator on demand working on all aspects of our internal and client communication. This last trimester we started working with Google Play Optimization, a pretty linear segment for us because all the touch points we cover.
We also hired Filipe, our new Junior Android Developer. He's been giving us a huge help with all our client work, and also maintaining our own projects in place. You can read about his big update on our Android Starter Template.
Finances
In the last 12 months, with the additional Stacks Grant we won, our income grew to about €96K. Our expenses also increased, especially with the new hires' salaries, but they sat at about €78K. So, this was our best year in terms of profit.
Expenses fall into (in descending order):
Salaries and taxes;
Rent;
Expenses with equipment and office maintenance;
Services (account, layers, subcontractors);
Give back and internal activities.
Everyone's salary is the same, €1050 net per month, which we'll keep increasing until it reaches our local industry average.
Intentions
Writing our plan for our 7th year is a good way for us to have a public commitment. One main goal is to find enough time for our internal projects, something we've been struggling with for the past years.
Client Work
Better processes
Better processes mean a better organized project, a happier team and happier clients. With our 6 years of work, we've gained enough experience on the different kinds of projects we can take. Now we need to improve our processes to make them run smoother.
Business Development (sp. Design)
We want to work more on the Social Impact and Human Rights vertical. Working with projects that matter to us and the rest of world inspires us to do more, and understand the value we can give back.
Continue increasing rates
Internal
Generate more income with current apps
Optimize communication
New projects to generate passive income