We once again got an “honor” mention on Gartner’s 2021 MQ for IT Risk Management. In 2020 we were mentioned as a “Cool Vendor”. For some strange reason they seem to like us.
Note: most likely we would be listed on the MQ if it wouldn’t be for the required minimum financial target (which at 2500 eur / license we will never achieve).
Trivia (Esteban writing):
- If after 10 years we are still here is not because we are good but because the competition is very bad. I tell this everyone all the time
- eramba is "Esteban Ribicic, Adriana Matovicova, Boris and Aida) … the initials of Esteban family members. Aida actually is not correct, my wife was pregnant and we thought we would have a girl, in the end it was a boy (Benjamin) which … well is not part of eramba.
- We know we are not good in many aspects, we are far more critical of our work than any of you would ever know - we really try hard to make something good tough
- My absolute dream was to build something useful that would get a Wikipedia page (to this day we have no wikipedia page!)
- A top top top “GRC Strategist” at an immense technology company once told me I was delusional about eramba ever working
- Almost 9 years ago - a well known Security consultancy firm in the East Coast refused %50 of eramba in exchange for 7000 USD so i could pay Martin salary for a year. They kind of laughed at me. I still have the email and once in a while i look at it.
- In the first five years we had no offices, we had our meetings at this petrol station coffee shop in Bratislava or from home.
- We are five people. Martin (head development), Marek (head 2 developement), Sam (does almost about everything), Esteban (same as Sam) and Adriana (invoices, etc - Esteban’s wife). We are now looking for another developer.
- We have no sales teams, no marketing teams, no yearly budgets, no sales targets, never spent a cent on marketing, etc.
- We do not have debts, we actually never had debts. We have always kept enough cash at the bank to pay all costs of the project for a full year assuming zero revenue.
- Esteban built the first versions, then used his own money to onboard Martin until we had enough money to keep growing organically and hire developers and support. It took 8 years to secure the team and savings on the bank for Esteban to feel comfortable to finally work full time for eramba. 8 years working pretty much for free.
- I was lucky to meet many customers all around the world - all continents except Antartica (i still have hope we’ll sell a license there too, maybe some bored penguin?)
- In order to keep control and make sure the community gets something we have always refused money injection (we receive offers from VCs, etc a couple of times per year since at least the last 4 years). If we would take investors money i can guarantee you that the community free software dies within a semester, the enterprise fee gets a lot more expensive and they would put some CEO that would kick me in a matter of weeks!. No gracias.
- We are not communists, we love money as much as you do (once I was asked by a financial guru - what’s wrong with you Esteban, dont you like money?)
- Our office is now in old town and this year we rented another small office in the building (200 eur) to have a gym. No one except Sam uses it. Guess who is the fittest guy on the office? - he is also vegetarian and dresses stricly in black clothes (every day)…the new generation they call it.
- The only way to run this project and charge the ridiculous amount we charge is because we built this without any expectations (other than my fu…ing wikipedia page!!) for years and we are, to this day, extremely frugal. We do all get really good salaries and we have a ton of flexibility.
- Our accountants from day one the are the same company from North England (https://www.yourvalued.co.uk/), to this day we only work with them over email because over phone we typically do not understand even half of what they are telling me.
- We frankly speaking love being small, flexible, made of good friends that know each other for many many years and above all keep a very low profile.
We want to thank you for your support and your patience and for as long health is with us, you can count with eramba improving one release at a time for many more years. Thank you again.
