Eleven Years of Jump24: Reflections on Building a Laravel Development Team.

This week marks 11 years since we started Jump24, and if I'm being completely honest, I never thought we'd still be here. Not because I didn't believe in what we were doing, but because I genuinely had no idea what "here" would look like after more than a decade.

When you're starting out, you think in much shorter timeframes. You worry about next month's rent, whether that client will actually pay their invoice, and if you can figure out deployment without breaking everything (spoiler alert: you will break things, and that's fine).

What you don't think about is what happens when someone stays with your company for 5 years. Or 10 years. What do you do to celebrate that? How do you show appreciation? How do you keep growing together rather than growing apart?

This year, we have two team members who've been with Jump24 for an entire decade. Ten years! That's longer than most people stay in any job, and it's definitely longer than I ever dared to plan for when I was just trying to figure out the basics of running a business.

The Early Days - When Everything Was Terrifying

Jump24 was born in 2014, and those early days were... well, let's just say I learned a lot about what not to do. I was a decent developer (or at least I thought I was), but running a business? That was a completely different skill set.

I remember spending hours trying to work out how to write a proper contract, how to price projects, and whether I should register for VAT (the answer, by the way, is yes - just do it early and save yourself the headache later).

The first hire was terrifying. Not just because of the financial responsibility, but because I suddenly realised I had no idea how to manage anyone. I'd never had to think about things like:

• How do we do code reviews without crushing someone's confidence?

• What happens when we disagree on technical approaches?

• How do we handle it when someone makes a mistake that affects a client project?

• What's our policy on working from home? (This was 2014 - remote work wasn't as accepted as it is now)

I made plenty of mistakes in those early years. I probably micromanaged too much because I was worried about quality. I definitely underpriced projects because I was worried about losing clients. And I absolutely struggled with the transition from "I'll just fix this myself" to "let me help you figure out how to fix this."

Growing Pains - When 'Just Winging It' Stops Working

By 2016, we'd grown to about 6 people, and I started to realise that the informal "we'll figure it out as we go" approach wasn't going to scale. We needed actual processes, real procedures, and - much as it pained my developer heart - documentation.

This is when I learned one of the most important lessons about building a team: you can't just hire good developers and expect everything else to sort itself out. You need to create an environment where good developers can do their best work.

That meant things like:

• Establishing proper code review processes (not just "does it work?" but "is it maintainable?")

• Creating development workflows that didn't depend on any one person knowing all the tricks

• Building a company culture where asking questions was encouraged, not seen as a sign of weakness

• Setting up proper project management so we weren't constantly firefighting

The hardest part wasn't the technical stuff - it was learning to delegate. As a founder, there's this voice in your head that says "I could just do this myself faster." And sometimes that's true! But if you always do it yourself, you never give your team the chance to grow, and you never get the chance to work on the bigger picture, this was one of the hardest things for me to get right and I still sometimes find myself holding onto things when I should really let them go and give them to the team.

The Growth Years - When Everything Gets More Complex

Around 2018-2019, we hit our peak size of 16 people. It was exciting - we had multiple project teams, we could take on bigger challenges, and we were doing some really interesting work with Laravel applications.

But I also learned that bigger isn't always better. With 16 people, you start needing layers of management. Communication becomes harder. The tight-knit team feeling starts to fade a bit. Don't get me wrong - we did great work during this period, but it made me realise that there's an optimal size for different types of companies.

Finding Our Sweet Spot - The Team We Are Today

Today, we're 11 people. It feels right. We're large enough to take on significant projects and have specialised expertise, but small enough that everyone knows everyone, communication is direct, and we can maintain that family feel that I think is so important in a development team.

The two team members celebrating 10 years with us this year represent something I never planned for but am incredibly proud of. They've been through the growth, the challenges, the technological changes (remember when Laravel 4 was the hot new thing?), and the evolution of how we work.

They've seen me make mistakes and learn from them. They've contributed ideas that became company policy. They've mentored newer team members and been mentored themselves as technology evolved. In many ways, they've helped build Jump24 as much as I have.

What I've Learned About Building a Development Team

After 11 years, here are some things I wish I'd known from the start:

Your first hires set the culture forever. We got lucky with our early team members - they were not just skilled developers but good people who cared about quality work and treating each other well. That culture has persisted even as people have come and gone.

Technical skills can be taught, attitude can't. I've learned to hire for attitude and aptitude rather than just technical ability. Someone who's curious, collaborative, and committed to continuous learning will always be a better long-term addition than someone who knows every Laravel package but doesn't play well with others.

Remote work isn't just about technology, it's about trust. The key isn't having the right tools (though that helps) - it's building a team where people feel trusted to do good work regardless of where they're sitting.

Growth for the sake of growth is meaningless. Those peak-16-people days taught me that bigger isn't necessarily better. What matters is having the right people to do great work for clients and to support each other's growth.

Celebrating the small stuff matters. Work anniversaries, project launches, someone mastering a new technology - these moments add up to create a positive team culture. Don't wait for the big milestones to acknowledge good work.

Technical debt applies to team processes too. Just like codebases, team processes can accumulate cruft over time. Regular retrospectives and process improvements are essential - don't just assume that what worked at 5 people will work at 10.

The Laravel Journey

It's worth noting that our entire 11-year journey has essentially been the Laravel journey too. We started with Laravel 4, survived the Laravel 5.x upgrades (if you know, you know), celebrated the LTS releases, and watched the ecosystem mature into the powerful development platform it is today.

Laravel's evolution has shaped how we work in so many ways. The introduction of proper testing tools made us better at quality assurance. The migration system taught us better discipline around database changes. The ecosystem of packages like Horizon, Telescope, and Nova gave us powerful tools to build better applications for our clients.

But more than the technical improvements, I think Laravel's emphasis on developer happiness and clean, expressive code has influenced our company culture. We try to write code that we'd be happy to maintain in two years' time, and we try to build a work environment that we'd be happy to be part of for the long term.

Looking Forward

So what's next for Jump24? Honestly, I'm not sure, and I think that's okay. If 11 years has taught me anything, it's that the best parts of this journey have been the unexpected ones.

What I do know is that we've got a fantastic team, we're working on interesting projects, and we're still learning new things every day. Laravel continues to evolve, the web development landscape keeps changing, and our clients keep presenting us with new challenges to solve.

The two team members celebrating 10 years this year have seen Jump24 grow and change dramatically. I hope in another 10 years, we've got people celebrating their 20th anniversary with the company. I hope we're still writing clean, maintainable code. I hope we're still learning from our mistakes and celebrating our successes.

And I hope we're still having fun doing it.

Thank You

To everyone who's been part of the Jump24 story - current team members, former colleagues, clients who trusted us with their projects, and the Laravel community that's supported and inspired us - thank you.

11 years in, and we're just getting started.

P.S. - If you're dealing with legacy Laravel applications that need upgrading, we've got quite a bit of experience with that now. Just saying.