Sixteen years ago on this day, two young, creative and confident Canberrans waked into an ACT Government office building in the city’s CBD to register a new business. Or, to use contemporary terms, two innovative and ambitious entrepreneurs founded their first startup. A month later the startup landed seed funding, the old way, via a 20k overdraft account with ANZ Bank. No security, just a business plan and a list of prospective clients. Based on reputation, talented staff and hard work the business picked up a small number of projects and used the earned revenue to create an absence of failure over its first year.
The business was soon incorporated as a company and thus began the story of Link Web Services Pty Ltd on 27 November 2001.
To be both brief and honest, the next 15 years were much of the same. We matured into a respected digital agency and began trading as Link Digital in 2004, but it’s continued to be hard work, and the narrow avoidance of failure, which has charted our path forward. Any obstacles which have stood in our way have been cracked and cleared one by one. Somehow we’ve kept this thing going. Daily, monthly, yearly against whatever came our way.
Each day in business is a success, and today especially so. Not only is today the first day of Link’s 17th year of operation it’s the day I walked into the office after a five-week experiment to see if Link can effectively operate with my work based in the Central European time zone. The results are in and the answer is yes.
So, on this anniversary our staff in Canberra, Perth, Sydney and Kharkiv are all logging in with news that the company will be opening an office in Berlin during the first half of 2018. More clients, more obstacles and more horizons to explore..
It is the strong management team driving Link forward which makes all of this possible.
Angela Hulford: Our General Manager, who will mark her seventh year with Link in January 2018. Based in Perth, Angela manages the integration of all locations and business areas from Australia’s western time zone, giving her cross over with AEST and CET based staff.
Kate Svetocheva: Our Sales and Marketing Manager, who joined us only 18 months ago but has proven to be an invaluable addition to the team. Kate’s passion for, and focus on, client success has driven the establishment of our Enterprise Account Management service and paved the way for the creation of Partner Network and Consulting programs due for release in 2018.
Iaroslav Pereiaslovets: Operations Manager, who will mark his six year with Link in August 2018. As a highly achieving Developer and Technical Product Owner Iaro has been running development team and unit operations since relocating to Canberra from our Kharkiv team in 2015. He will continue to be instrumental in the recruitment, onboarding and management of technical staff in both Australia and Europe.
Inclusive of myself, our small and effective management team is, dare I say it, agile. Working together over the last five weeks we have delivered a proof of value for a Berlin office and are today very eager to clear the 2017 backlog and start 2018 in a sprint toward Europe.
