When two become one. The story of Boldare
This story is not about merging companies. This story is about people. People who for the last 16 years were building exciting digital products. This story is about how software development meets design to create something new yet valuable for end users. This is the story of Boldare.
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Boldare is the result of a natural joining of two sister companies: XSolve and Chilid. Boldare is a way to channel the skills and aspirations of people working in both companies into one. To give them a new framework for personal development and space for even more agile thinking and working. And to offer something different to the market: a company which creates digital products not for the clients, but with clients to meet the real needs of end users. A truly forward-looking digital product development company.
The roots of Boldare
Boldare is the natural evolution of XSolve and Chilid.
XSolve, established in 2004 by Piotr Majchrzak, is focused on software development and long-term collaborations. The company offers agile-thinking, scrum development teams dedicated to working with customers side by side to help them solve their business problems. The company has been listed among Global PHP Leaders on Clutch and as the one of the fastest-growing private companies in Europe, according to Inc. 5000.
On the other hand, Chilid was established in 2010 by Anna Zarudzka as a response to different customers needs. Chilid, is a design-driven company, focusing on front-end and rapid development. Chilid mixes product vision, design, software development and agile to deliver digital products, mostly in the form of MVPs. Chilid has nine Awwwards, CSS REEL winner, German Web Award and Indigo Design Award.
Both companies were meeting different market needs yet working under one roof and cooperating on a regular basis. XSolve and Chilid have been partners on more than 100 products for clients such as BlaBlaCar, Corel, Agnitio, PSO, Netrounds, Showbiz Models, Viners, Tauron, Oneida and many more. In time, as the market and customer requirements evolved, the distinction between the two companies began to vanish.
It was time to go one step further.
The reasons to be Bold(are)
Boldare is not a simple consolidation of two companies but a creative approach to their business domains resulting in a new organization and offer. To understand Boldare better, I asked Anna Zarudzka, the CEO of Chilid, the most simple question of all: why?
She told me there are three core reasons for bringing Boldare to life, which are:
People
“The reason we decided to merge are people. Piotr and I noticed that our people were getting strangled by schemas, that they don’t have enough space to breathe. The people working in XSolve and Chilid have slightly different mindsets. Boldare is a way to preserve these mindsets, combine them and put them to use in the service of digital product development. And the one of the tools to achieve that is holacracy. Holacracy, which we introduced in both companies less than a year ago, gives us a unique chance to go with this merger, it catalyzes it. It helps us to preserve the autonomy of our teams and yet keep the focus on a mutual goal. Thanks to holacracy we keep the focus on two core aspects of product development but we are now one organism. Without holacracy, we wouldn’t have a proper tool for the merger which would make the whole process much more difficult. Happily ‘Hola’ proved to be useful and helped us to become Boldare.”
Market
“The dualism of Xsolve and Chilid resulted from market needs. 8-10 years ago the market wasn’t ready for the company where product design and software development are under one roof. Clients were seeking coders in one place and were coming for designers somewhere else. But in the last few years, client needs has been evolving. They’re looking for a trusted partner with experience who will assist and guide them through a journey of digital transformation; who will provide a comprehensive offer covering the full digital product development cycle; who won’t force a choice between scalable software or a user-centered interface. Moreover, companies need a partner with whom they can consult on their business needs, and what is more, they expect to find all of this in one place. We want to build this place for them.”
Experience
“For the last decade, Xsolve and Chilid have been working side by side but, except for joint projects, for different types of clients with different needs. During this time both companies built a level of expertise in their domains which meets the client’s high standards regarding quality and professionalism. Our experience gained from working on more than 250 products for 89 clients is one of the reasons why we decided to merge both companies. We know that we are prepared to offer the market something different and we are doing that with the full awareness that we can provide the same high quality in Boldare, as we did in XSolve and Chilid.”
The story of Boldare
So, what is Boldare? It is a fusion of two companies and two mindsets. It is experience and know-how accumulated, mixed, transformed and aimed at developing digital products and design-driven software. It is an agile and design-thinking, lean-building, scrum-managing work environment cemented by its unique cultural fit. But this is not a simple case of 1+1=2. It never has been and never will be.
Anna Zarudzka, the CEO of Chilid:
“Boldare has been established to create products that users would actually use. Products which will build relationships and habits. In this approach, the software is divided into what is needed and what is unnecessary. We want to develop software which is needed, which will shape the future. We want to provide our customers with human-centered products that really meet their business needs. We want to offer them a digital transformation. This requires a comprehensive verification of those business needs. Technology is no longer isolated from humanism. It is technology and humanism together.”
Piotr Majchrzak, the CEO of XSolve:
“With 14 years of experience and having built 250 products built we recognize that in today’s world, software development that is not a core activity too often is nothing more than local optimization, and doesn’t empower clients to become global leaders. Today, a successful company needs a super-agile, highly competent design and development team. But that alone is not enough. It’s also essential to have an environment and culture of user-centred innovation to produce future-proof, secure, needed and significant web apps, mobile apps, and enterprise software That constitutes a fundamental paradigm shift of working with an external development company embedded into your organization like an in-house development department. Only in this way can modern companies be certain of executing their vision rapidly, creating habit-building products that are used regularly, and responding quickly to an ever-changing business environment, fulfilling company business goals with minimum waste. Boldare is a response to these changes and new market needs. We offer human-centered digital products and guidance for companies who want to catalyze their innovation or kick start their digital transformation.”
This is Boldare.
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