The ICO industry continues to attract a lot of attention. In 2017 only, blockchain companies raised close to $4 billion. More companies are deciding to fund their business ideas using ICO tokens, and Herdius is one of them. The Berlin-based startup has chosen to raise capital through an ICO as a promising alternative to traditional venture capital funding. They needed to find a way to attract and convince investors to their idea.

Software development projects are difficult to manage. They are complex, fast-moving and involve people of varying competences. Today’s industry standard is agile management, which supports changing market realities and allows for fast iteration of ideas. It’s the perfect solution for startup founders and innovators. What is it like from the inside? Download our book and find out.

For years, Java has been the standard for developing Android apps. In 2011, JetBrains presented Kotlin, a new statically-typed language running on Java Virtual Machine. In 2017, during Google I/O, Kotlin was announced as an official language for Android development. As Kotlin is a modern programming language with powerful features, it gained popularity among Android developers. It was placed second on the list of the most loved programming languages in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018.

For a casual observer, the fintech scene looks like a uniform rock: it is all about digital banking alternatives (such as N26, Revolut, Tandem, Yoyo Wallet or Monzo). As in any industry, the same logic applies here - companies with a B2C business model attract customers the fastest, raise the largest investment rounds and, in the end, grab the most headlines.

Marta is a member of Netguru’s HR team. She coordinates our recruitment efforts and works on employer branding. She joined Netguru in 2016 and seems to be very tolerant of our crazy antics so far.

“A perfect job for people who like challenges and learning new skills but are also flexible and able to adapt to changes”, this is how Marek Talarczyk, Netguru’s Chief of Operations, described the position of Head of Project Management. HoPM at Netguru will be responsible for six teams of almost 30 project managers running more than 85 projects a year in total with almost 70-percent project predictability. Sounds interesting? Read on and apply for Head of Project Management as the recruitment process is now open.

Vue.js has already earned a significant spot among the most popular JavaScript frameworks. Its popularity growth in the last year has been astonishing, and it’s definitely not going to stop anytime soon. 

Quality Assurance Specialists are inseparable members of agile development teams. Yet, for many, their role is quite vague. It is usually associated only with testing developers’ code. While this is true to a large extent, there is also much more to what QAs can bring to your project team. Realizing this will allow you to better understand how development teams in Netguru work and see the role of quality assurance more clearly. Here are some not so obvious benefits of having a Quality Assurance Specialist in your project.

Vue is an open-source, progressive JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. It was designed to be incrementally adoptable – the core library focuses on the view layer only, so it's easy to integrate Vue with other libraries or projects.

This is a practical guide on improving predictability: you’ll learn how to recognise when you need to work on your predictability and how to set the right goals to achieve the results you want. At the very end of this article we also talk about the future and what the next steps will be for Netguru as we grow and mature as a company.

On our quest for more predictability, we were visited by consultants with prior experience gained at leading software corporations. They were supposed to share their tools and processes and help us identify what we could improve in ours. In reality, they couldn’t help us. Our predictability was higher than theirs, and they saw no need to improve it any further.

Developing a software product is a risk. Ask all the failed tech startups. According to this report by Small Business Trends, more than 50% of small businesses fail in their first 4 years. The leading reason? Incompetence, which basically means failure at applying good internal processes in business. So, what can you do to turn the odds in your favour?

“Step up your game, be bold, act fast” was one of the key messages delivered by Georg Ludviksson, CEO of fintech startup Meniga at the Impact fintech’17 event. Even if that word of advice for incumbent banks wasn’t heard loud enough, no one could ignore the latest news about BBVA’s investments in Atom and solarisBank (by the way, we are happy to have solarisBank as a partner here at Netguru).

Fintech sector is at a turning point. It hasn’t become the mainstream yet, but it is already gaining momentum among startups and large enterprises. The legislation around the market is evolving, alternatives to traditional banking are popping up, and Blockchain is redefining security concerns. That said, the UX aspect of new fintech platforms is one of the biggest shifts the new technologies offer. Those who fail to understand the connection between design and fintech will lag behind. Best use-cases, lessons learnt, industry leaders. Join the fintech community at Disruption Forum Berlin Fintech!

Since time immemorial, travel addicts have faced the problem of either having the money or lots of free time. It’s hard to have both. I didn’t want to compromise, and, luckily, I got a job that allowed me to keep my travelling bug alive without giving up on my professional career.

The Policygenius story goes as follows: back in the day, two McKinsey consultants were advising insurers on growth and marketing strategies. They found a repetitive pattern: the insurers didn’t have a clue how to engage with customers online. So they decided to start their own company to tackle that challenge.

China earned its reputation for copying, but it would be naive to let this “can’t innovate” myth persist. “You can no longer lose sight of what is happening in the East”, warns one of the largest consulting companies. And this is especially true for the financial and insurance industry. China, with almost 800 million Internet users, propitious regulators, and behemoths such as Alibaba or Tencent, is quickly becoming the world's largest innovation incubator. To crack the Chinese secret code, I spoke to Mikołaj Bołtuć and Marcin Nedwidek of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Machine learning applications can bring you more clients, increase sales and reduce business costs. However, if not used properly, they may lead to customer outflow, money loss and reputation damage. When should you use ML in your business and when is it better to stick with traditional computing methods?

Hello and welcome to Ruby Brief #52! We’ve found some great articles for you this month. We hope you’ll like it!

Several years of UX experience - in core-banking in a global bank and the fintech industry in both London and Poland - led me to create this list. The entries below are absolute must-haves when it comes to fintech products.