Summary of 2017 & outlook on 2018 by our CEO & CTO

It's almost the end of the year and we wanted to hear from our CEO & CTO: what are their 2017 highlights, learnings & how do they see 2018? So we interviewed them 🙂 Here are their answers:

1. How would you summarise the year 2017 at Kiwee?

Anna: This year was all about growth for Kiwee 🙂 More awesome people, new challenging projects and a new bigger office space.

We almost doubled in size as a company this year and we are very proud of our hiring efforts, we have to confess 😉 Ksenia, Karol, Tomasz, Konrad and Karolina - awesome to have you onboard!

This year we also established new stable partnerships and were hard at work driving new complex projects and broadening our technology spectrum. All confidential for now due to NDAs - watch this space, we’ll reveal more soon! 🙂

And of course with such fast development of the company we grew out of our cosy office at Norwida street. Starting from July we’ve been working in a beautiful building on Mianowskiego street built in 1939. Eclectic ‘’past-future’’ vintage interior, beautiful neighbourhood of the Technical University of Wrocław and Odra river just 1 minute away - simply an inspiration!

2. What’s the biggest highlight of the 2017 year for you personally? 🙂

Anna: My highlight of the year is how we work as a team, benefiting from the collective intelligence of our group. When I look back and compare it to the times when we were a two-people company and we had to do everything on our own, what we have now is a completely new level of richness and diversity of ideas as well as much faster and much more effective execution.

Tomasz: This year we dared to implement tech solutions that were very new within the eCommerce industry. It seemed extremely challenging at the beginning. However, it was worth the effort & the results were very satisfying. On the people side, in 2017 we celebrated two weddings & welcomed one newborn 🙂 And within our animal rescue initiative we saved lives of over two dozens animals!!!

3. What are your tech predictions for the eCommerce industry in 2018?

We have a few tech predictions for the eCommerce industry in the upcoming year.

Anna:
Visual search technology
We all see now that language is no longer an obstacle in commerce as consumers now can take a picture on a street, do a screenshot, and it will be translated into traditional search results. Amazing, isn’t it? In my opinion, image-based search is a technology into which many retailers and merchants like eBay, Target and Pinterest will be investing in 2018.

Subscription model
As consumers, we are now used to the commodity of having goods delivered to our doorstep on a daily, weekly or monthly basis as part of subscription models. I see an especially big potential here for the healthy & fresh food delivery businesses. A recurring revenue model brings stability to businesses and makes it easier then to invest further.

Tomasz:
AI generated personalised content
I predict that AI-powered content generation will allow to serve deeply personalised content to consumers. This will be especially important to reach the Millennial audience. Usage of behavioural data is a big shift towards traditional offline relationship between a consumer and a merchant, when a merchant knows his/her clients’ name, cares for a small talk about family, pets, weather, etc.

Chatbots
In 2017 I observed a tendency that many merchants invested into chatbots supported by AI. I suspect this trend will continue to rise in 2018. Chatbots will allow eCommerce businesses to scale their customer care rapidly according to a company’s growth and to decrease the costs long-term.

4. What shall we expect from Kiwee in 2018?

Anna: Guess what?! You’re right, even more growth 🙂 But a balanced one. While we’ll definitely be signing contracts with new clients, we’ll also be balancing out the growth with hiring more people to keep our commitment to having a stress-free working environment for all. We love learning new technologies and adding them to our skillset and in 2018 we will keep experimenting within our ‘Kiwee Lab’ (a code name for our internal innovation sandbox). Last, but not least, you’ll also see us sharing our knowledge with our local community here in Wroclaw 🙂

Wishes to the readers & Kiwee friends:

Anna & Tomasz: The entire Kiwee team joins us in wishing you all the best in 2018! May this be an exceptional year of self-development, realizing your dreams, new experiences, and spending unique moments with who you love.

Enjoy holidays & Happy 2018!