Looking back on 2013: The top 5 news of Nulab
Hi there! How was your 2013? Mine has been an eventful one, and I’ve put on about 11 pounds this year. It’s a tough resolution to make, but unfortunately, it’s really time to get on a diet in 2014.
2013 has also been an eventful year for Nulab. We’ve had major product updates and launches, reached important milestones, and welcomed several new members to the team. With the year coming to an end in just two weeks, I’ve asked the Nulabers to pick the top five most important news in 2013 to share. Here’s a walk down memory lane for the year of 2013 at Nulab.
Homegrown Nulab band, Dirty Nu, performing on Nulab Night 2013
#1 Cacoo Hits One Million Users
Since its Beta launch in 2009, Cacoo’s user base has been expanding steadily across the globe. At the beginning of November 2013, Cacoo saw its first million users from across 216 countries worldwide. In celebrating this incredible milestone, we held a celebratory campaign with great prizes for some of Cacoo’s lucky supporters.
Top 15 countries with the highest percentage of Cacoo users
The introduction of Cacoo SDK and Enterprise version has certainly been an important factor for this huge achievement. As we push out more updates and improvements, we are confident to see the numbers continue to grow, and I believe that it won’t be long for Cacoo to hit ten million users.
#2 New Nulabers Onboard
Nulab started with three founders in 2004, and grew to eighteen Nulabers by 2012. In 2013, we welcomed five new members to the team, increasing our strength to 23 in five cities namely Fukuoka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Singapore, Bandung, and Taipei.
Nulab team in Fukuoka
Nia Lesmana is our Indonesia community manager also sometimes called the comedy manager by other Nulabers. She is based in the charming city of Bandung, Indonesia. She loves fashion, traveling, music, cats, Korea, eating, and spreading the happy virus.
Siska Flaurensia is our digital designer with more than five years experience in front-end design & development, art direction, branding, and UI design for both web and mobile. Our collaborative chat app, Typetalk, as well as the Nulab global site are both designed by her. She calls herself a “citizen of the world” who loves traveling, singing in the car, and eating red velvet cupcakes.
Iris Tan is our Singapore community manager and the genius editor of this blog. She was born and raised on the tropical island of Singapore, and has a deep-seated wanderlust that only grows with every country she visits. She has a background in communications and public relations, and a fierce passion for sea otters.
Lillian Lu is our Taiwan community manager based in the bustling city of Taipei. Often called “the smart one” by her friends, she has a background in IT marketing and public relations. Her ultimate goal is to be globetrotting around the world and trying out good exotic food.
It has been a great year so far getting to know and work with these fresh, new faces. With the addition of these wonderful members, we are tremendously excited to be gradually shifting towards becoming a global team. We hope to bring onboard even more members from different countries beyond Asia, and to bring our presence to far-reaching places on the globe in the near future.
#3 Typetalk Preview Beta & Mobile Version Launch
On 31 July this year, we launched a new collaborative chat application, Typetalk, which aims to revolutionize team discussions. As such, we’ve also coined a new term Typetalkin’, a verb to describe the discussion and sharing of ideas among team members through instant messaging on a web or mobile platform. To complement the objective of providing a convenient platform for users to collaborate, we launched the mobile version of Typetalk on 10 December for iOS and Android.
Typetalk product owner, Tsuyoshi Yoshizawa, rocking a selfie
The addition of Typetalk to our portfolio of services brings a new dimension to our central concept of collaboration. As we look forward to an integration of all our three services in future, Typetalk can be expected to enrich the communication aspect of both Cacoo and Backlog. Typetalk product owner, Tsuyoshi Yoshizawa, also has a vision for Typetalk to become a household name with its fun and versatile functionality.
To learn about Typetalk news and updates, follow us on Facebook or Twitter!
#4 A Shift in Focus to Our Core Services
At the end of March 2013, we said goodbye to our department of client software development. This move was to allow us to channel more resources to our core services, Cacoo, Backlog, and Typetalk.
“Each of the three board members plays a different role. Hashimoto was in charge of managing the client software development, but since [Cacoo and Backlog] started showing good numbers, he decided to shutdown that department.”
(Changing gears: How Japan’s Nulab pulled off the slow pivot – THE BRIDGE)
Despite its closure, the department of client software development had been extremely valuable to us in that it allowed us to continuously practise dogfooding on our core services. Still, as most Nulabers agree, the shut down of this department is a progressive move for Nulab, as we can now be fully dedicated to growing Cacoo, Backlog, and Typetalk to make them even better for you.
#5 Nulab General Meeting and Nulab Night
Ask any Nulaber about our general meeting and Nulab Night, and they will tell you just how much they love it. These two annual events in April bring about an opportunity for all Nulabers to gather offline at the Nulab headquarters in Fukuoka. It’s a time for us to meet our team members from another city or country, swap stories, exchange updates and to share our plans and ideas for the year ahead.
Nulab General Meeting 2013 – Keynote sharing session in the lounge room at Fukuoka headquarters
Nulab Night is held in the evening after the general meeting. It’s a party extended to all Nulabers, their family members, as well as all Nulab friends and business partners.
Friends of Nulab @ Nulab Night 2013
The many aspiring musicians at Nulab contributed to the DJ booth, live bands, and lip-syncing dance performances. We also had amazing food generously prepared by families of Nulabers, great wine and an endless flow of draft beer. As we celebrate Nulab’s 10th anniversary next year in 2014, we’d expect a party more exciting than ever in Nulab history.
Nulab musicians exhibiting their great talents on Nulab Night 2013
Other News
Apart from these top five news, there were also several other noteworthy news and updates in 2013 including Backlog Chinese Version Launch, Backlog Live Q&A Launch, GitHub’s visit to Nulab headquarters, Cacooup South East Asia Tour 2013, and of course, the launch of our global website and blog.
With this, we hope you’ve enjoyed the year with us, and we wish you all happy holidays and a fabulous 2014 ahead. Let’s make collaboration even more fun and creative in 2014!