The start of any business stems from an idea. However, in most cases, the idea remains dormant due to the lack of courage, resources, time, or money to take it forward.
And for the ones who take an action to move forward, they tend to be unprepared and eventually find themselves spending considerable time and money to waste.
But there stands tall a few entrepreneurs who take a foundling idea and translate it into reality with their vision and dedication.
One such entrepreneur is Aytekin Tank, the Founder and CEO of JotForm.
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The Initial Spark
While working as a developer in New York back in 2006, Aytekin kept stumbling across a pain point at work – coding online forms. Even though he had the necessary technical skills, it took considerable time and effort to make a good online form.
Amidst such a tiring situation, Aytekin went online to search for an easier way to get it done. His search quickly resulted in a realization about the lack of solution available in the market pertaining to online forms.
Aytekin subsequently formed JotForm, a platform that introduced the idea of building a web form on a WYSIWYG form editor with the help of JavaScript drag and drop and AJAX. At first, the visionary saw it as a simple side project, however, with time he realized its potential and quit his job to devote himself completely towards building the company.
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The Growth Wave
Following his jump into working with JotForm in a full-time capacity, Aytekin built his team steadily and deliberately. The company has never received any outside funding, yet it has found itself on a continuous cycle of growth.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company firmly believes in keeping things independent, creative, and fun. The team at JotForm is spread across the globe with an office located in Ankara, Turkey. Add to this, its 20-plus support team members work from around the world to ensure and deliver 24/7 customer support.
Since incepting in 2006, the company has undergone substantial changes and grown at a rapid pace. The company had an employee pool of about 35 people back in 2014, the opening year of its San Francisco office. Today, the headcount has crossed the 150 mark with over 5 million users across more than 177 countries. More than a thousand new users create their account on JotForm every single day, thus highlighting the massive growth of the company over the years.
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One Thing at a Time
Talking about the workplace at JotForm, Aytekin was quick to note “We’re big believers in focus and on working on a single thing at a time.”
For Aytekin and his team, fostering team productivity requires having a single shared goal. The company keeps its meetings to a minimum and instead gives different cross-functional teams their own workplaces. This enables them to share ideas in a free manner and work on the same projects together. It builds comradery and ensures optimal workplace productivity.
For Aytekin, “Great workplaces start with respect, and we try to foster that here as well.” At JotForm, there lies a number of opportunities to grow as a professional, take ownership over projects, lead teams, and make a serious impact. “That’s what makes it such a great place to work, across all of our offices,” he adds.
Moreover, the company claims to be highly fortunate to have great talents and innovative minds at its bay. The office in San Francisco, comprises its sales and marketing teams. Whereas, the office in Turkey boasts a great work environment and comprises supporters, designers, developers, and growth marketers. “In both cases, we try to find self-driven, flexible, and enthusiastic team members who want to roll up their sleeves and make an impact.”
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Constant Pursuit of Excellence
The form builder of JotForm has long been considered as one of the easiest to use in the market. But now, the advanced features of the JotForm platform have made it stand out from the crowd in more than one ways.
JotForm offers the most number of third-party integrations, the most advanced mobile forms application, stunning form design options, a powerful PDF Editor, and a modern interface. The investment in product development for JotForm has made a major impact to the company’s growth cycle.
Being a product-focused company, comes the task of active customer listening. At JotForm, every new integration, product, feature, or bug fix is ulimately done to make the user experience better. “This is a big reason why JotForm users are such big fans. We really do go above and beyond to make the product as great as we can,“ Aytekin asserts.
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The Road Ahead
Talking about the future of the company, Aytekin quickly points out the different approach in their strategy that they are undertaking in the near future. “In the past, most of our product improvements centered on the form creation experience. But our 2019 and 2020 product roadmaps are really about users being able to do more with their data. I can’t divulge much more than that, but we want users to have a better way to not only collect data, but also store it, organize it, analyze it, and share it.”
With a strong product roadmap by its side, JotForm is expected to make people look at the company in a new light.
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A Leader of Change
A developer by trade and a storyteller by heart, Aytekin Tank has shouldered JotForm to the tallest heights since founding the company 13 years back. The CEO oversees strategic hirings, growth, and development of the company.
Aytekin pens down key learnings from his journey as an entrepreneur and shares fruitful advice for startup companies through his blogs and articles. The product focus of JotFrom stems directly from Aytekin and he realizes the potential of the company; even beyond just being a leader in the form building space.
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JotForm has continued to grow by more than 50% every single year, and backed by Aytekin’s vision and continuous introduction of best-in-class features and integrations, the best is yet to come for the company.
Website – https://www.jotform.com
