1. Looking back on the past 10 years of Sixsentix, what would you say are the biggest accomplishments of our company?
When we look back, numerous memorable achievements come to mind, and it is difficult to select only a few. These include operating with nearly 400 personnel in a truly flat organizational structure with great team atmosphere, expanding our presence to seven locations, and developing our own product.
If I had to highlight one specific episode, I would say that our handling of the COVID-19 crisis stands out. Although the pandemic had a significant impact on businesses worldwide, we were able to weather the storm without significant disruption, thanks to a combination of bold decisions and a high level of stability and resilience we have achieved over the years.
In a more general sense, what makes me really proud is our unwavering commitment to prioritize teams, which played a crucial role in our development. In a decentralized organization, each team is unique, and we encourage this diversity since it leads to a healthy atmosphere and novel contributions to the company. Across all our locations, we have people with a range of talents, and we have learned how to harness their full potential and cultivate a creative and collaborative environment. Teamwork and team spirit are the cornerstones of our organization, and we are continually fostering this culture.
All of this, along with our mindset to be different and to continuously improve, has brought us to a point in which all doors are open for us, with myriads of business opportunities.
2. What do you think sets our company apart from our competitors in the testing industry?
Our crucial differentiator in the market is our mindset. Since our inception, we have focused on assembling teams of individuals with a true engineering and perfectionist mentality, always eager to learn, experiment, and improve in the process.
This approach enables us to treat clients with the utmost care and attention. We build the entire test architecture for them, striving to push the boundaries and make each project better than the last. Our services are always tailor-made to fit a particular client, and we tend to go beyond their initial requests. We take a holistic approach to understand our clients' business needs and requirements from various angles, particularly from an architectural perspective, to design technical solutions that address those needs in the most effective manner possible.
Moreover, we demonstrated the ability to attract and retain a large proportion of employees who share this mindset, which is a daunting task for larger industry players, and this separates us from them. Compared to smaller competitors, our unique advantage is our ability to compete on the global market while they are often more locally focused. In short, we are competing directly with the global industry leaders, providing clients with technical insights and an overall level of service excellence that cannot be matched by others.
3. Can you tell us the story behind the name “Sixsentix”? How did the company get its name?
That is an interesting story. The name is, obviously, envisioned as a word play on the term “sixth sense”. I always thought that QA needs to be professionalized and studied in a formal, structured manner, but I also like to stress the importance of instinct when it comes to delivering top-class testing services. The term "sixth sense" represents that extra level of intuition for testing, which we reinforce with our engineering prowess and in-depth understanding of the technical and business aspects of our work.
Aditionally, the suffix “tix” comes from the comic Asterix and Obelix. To us, this analogy has a lot of symbolic value. It represents our company’s independent spirit and competitive energy. Sixsentix, with its mindset and philosophy, embodies a small Gaul village, surrounded by big competitors that, just like Romans, try to pose a threat to our operations. We focus on being different and independent, relentlessly doing our own thing because we believe it is the best way to survive and grow. And just like every Gaul has some superpower, Sixsentix’s superpower is testing. And we still have many gallons more of magic potion.
4. Do you remember your original 10-year plan when you founded the organization? How different is the company from what you planned and imagined back then? Have you stuck largely to the original ideas, or were you more inclined to improvisation and changing courses?
When we started the company, I can’t say that we prepared any massive 10-year plan, but we did manage to establish some core principles that we have been committed to ever since, and which serve as our organization’s North Star.
It was clear from the outset that we would go in the direction of QA automation as our main business, and that our focus would be quality, not quantity, in every possible sense. We also recognized the importance and strength of an agile, versatile team covering a range of different skills, and this gave rise to the key concept of SWAT (Agile Software Testing) teams, working both onsite and nearshore.
The SWAT teams demonstrate our core principle of entrepreneurship and team spirit, and this idea serves as a basis for a decentralized, flat organization with independent entities and teams. We have always believed in the power of small, compact teams, and this legacy has helped us establish a culture of ownership, trust, and continuous improvement. With our unique working model, sustainable growth, and the right investments at the right time we managed to expand and replicate our business to multiple DACH and UAE locations.
While we did not have a 10-year plan in place initially, our adherence to these principles and values has enabled us to grow and thrive in an organic and natural way.
5. Looking ahead to the next 10 years, what are your goals for the company, and how do you plan to achieve them? Can one even plan that much ahead, given the rapid and somewhat unpredictable development of new technologies?
Our current market position is significantly better than it was a decade ago, which allows us to make more informed projections and plans, and I am really excited about the next 10 years. Right now, we are witnessing the rapid emergence of technologies that will fundamentally transform society, especially in AI. I don’t think it will be possible to plan much ahead precisely due to the pace of these changes. And in this race, I think we have a pole position because we have fostered a forward-thinking mindset, flexibility and adaptability, and invested early in research and development. This was especially demonstrated in the development of our existing solutions. The vast majority of our testers are innovation-minded, and this fact positions us as the most nimble and agile player in the market – a so-called “speedboat”.
In the next 10 years, I am convinced that Sixsentix will develop multiple different groundbreaking solutions. A strong sense of trust among management and between different teams will enable us to encourage innovations, as well as strengthen confidence in our decisions, expertise, and ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Our company's DNA makes us ideally prepared for the road ahead.
Finally, with the establishment of SixCube University, we will be adding a firm scientific foundation to our engineering mindset based on constant innovation. In my opinion, testers’ view of the problem should encompass multple dimensions: they have to understand the business needs, the developer’s work, then to recognize what could be the biggest risk/security breach – they need to think in much broader terms. I find it strange that there is still no formal education available for testers to learn about all of those aspects.
We intend to pass on this mentality to future QA professionals, and I am certain that the whole industry will benefit from our revolutionary, game-changing education someday. We expect to see a wealth of relevant research on quality developed at SixCube University in the years to come.
6. What role do you see our company playing in shaping the future of the testing industry?
In my early days in testing, I was a part of the company that developed testing tools, and I believed that the right tool alone could produce remarkable results. Later, when I started working in the service industry, I realized it is not really about the tool, but the people using it. Finally, with years of experience in this field, I have come to understand that both aspects are crucial. Educated and skilled professionals need the right tools, and good tools require skilled professionals to, so to say, “ask the right questions” and maximize their potential.
Our role, as pioneers in the industry, is to be some kind of glue, a binding agent, connecting these different segments of the market, making testing faster and more efficient. This means working together with standard solution providers whose solutions we can boost to facilitate faster and more reliable updates. Additionally, we may seek to partner up with companies roughly our size that share our innovation spirit in order to create a broader ecosystem capable of disrupting the market. Either way, our job will be to use our engineering vision and know-how to streamline QA as a discipline.
7. How has your leadership style evolved over the past decade, and how have you adapted to the changing needs of our company? SixCube is now essentially a decentralized organization, so how do you see the leadership role in these circumstances?
Coming from the world of professional football, I will use a football analogy here, as I often do. In a football team, there is no boss. There is only the captain. The captain should radiate positive influence and set the tone for the team, but he is no boss.
My style is to act like a captain, pass the ball and trust my teammates to make the best move. Rather than micromanaging, I believe in empowering my team to make the right decisions. As we have transitioned into a decentralized organization, my focus has shifted toward fostering a culture of collaboration and trust.
Rather than being at the center of everything, I see my role as supporting: enabling my team to lead their respective entities in a way that benefits the organization as a whole. While I do have specific responsibilities as CEO with a general overview of business, I believe that the most important decisions should be made on a team level, driven by expertise.
8. Are there any companies that you see as inspiration? Or that you saw as inspiration at a certain stage of the company’s development?
To be honest, not really. I was never fascinated by another business to the extent of using it as a model for our own. A company may look healthy and thriving from the outside, but it is difficult to determine how they operate behind the scenes and what challenges they actually face. I have encountered many positive but aso negative examples of leadership styles, for which I immediately knew that I would like to implement or that I would never like to have in our company.
At SixCube, we aim to cultivate our own unique identity. That can be very hard, especially in quickly evolving markets. We are part of the fastest-growing industry, and you need people who are inventive, resourceful, and educated in order to stay competitive. I am proud that in such an industry we managed to prosper while also maintaining our distinctive character.
As for personal inspiration, I admire entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, though I do not compare myself to them, as some of their innovations have truly far-reaching implications for humanity. My ambitions may be a bit more down-to-earth - I just want us to excel in our environment, and I want our employees to go home happy, with ample opportunities for personal and professional development in each of our locations.
9. What is the best and worst part of being a CEO of an international company?
Sometimes the role of a CEO can bring a sense of isolation with it. As the leader of the organization, a CEO is not part of any specific team, and communication with team members can be limited, especially in a decentralized organization. In my particular case, my team rarely meets onsite, and every member of my team leads their team in their country, so they are also very absorbed in what happens in their location every day. That is why I enjoy creating a project team around some new concept, some novel idea and working with them on a regular basis.
But the rewards outweigh all the downsides. And what I enjoy the most are the memories. When I look back at our path and our history, or when I recall how each of the different locations started its journey. When you visit our offices in different countries and you see how well each branch has developed, based on the initial principles that we implanted together, it gives you a sense of real pride and joy.
10. Finally, what message would you like to share with our customers, stakeholders, and our employees on this milestone anniversary?
I want to express my gratitude to our clients for choosing us and assure them that they are yet to see the full value that our vision and professionalism can bring to their business. To our stakeholders, I want to thank them for investing in our company and recognizing our worth. We will ensure that they will continue to reap the benefits of being at the forefront of this rapidly evolving industry.
To our employees, I want to extend my sincerest appreciation for their dedication and for believing in our endeavor. They are the backbone of our organization, and their commitment to our mission is what has led us to this moment. They are the most important piece to this puzzle, and without their passion and efforts, our success would not be possible.
As we move forward, I believe that the business landscape will continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace, and it is crucial that we stay ahead of the curve. I think that very soon, big tech breakthroughs will happen, not in a matter of years or months, but days. We will need to learn and adapt quickly, and I cannot wait to meet more people - partners, clients, or employees, with this attitude. With the right mindset and a shared passion for innovation, I am confident that we can continue to build great things together.