New Beginning
It’s the beginning of a new year (happy 2017 every body!), but this post is not about new year resolutions or anything of that kind. The new beginning in this case is just the first post by B&G. And for the first post, it will be kept simple by providing a brief history of how B&G started.
Bear & Giraffe (B&G) was founded in August 2015 by me, Youssef Chaker 👋🏼 with the help of my wife Jennifer Haddad. People always ask about the story behind the name, and it’s a really simple one. Jen has a thing for bears, and me being “furry” it was an easy connection to make, so her nickname for me became “bear”. On the other hand, Jen is 5'11" (180cm) and to most of her friends, she’s a giant so her nickname became giraffe. Hence Bear & Giraffe 🐻 (still waiting for a giraffe emoji.)
So why another dev shop? Aren’t there enough of those out there, do we need yet another one? The answer to this question is not a simple as it may seem. Part of the answer is that the presence of other dev shops or consulting agencies does not mean that there shouldn’t more. Competition is healthy after all. The other part of the answer is the more complicated part which is hard to explain in a short post (I’m trying to keep this one short), but primarily the idea is that I want to do things differently. Before you jump to any conclusion (eg. “oh here’s another millennial who thinks he can do things better), different does not necessarily mean better, or re-inventing the wheel. It just means doing things in a way that works for me, as an individual who might not have the same motivations as other people. We are all different, and although there are others in the same space, what works for them is different than what works for me, and that’s normal.
If you go to our website, the first thing you will see is the tag line “Web Development with a Twist” (see screenshot above) and you might wonder what does that mean. Well, I’ll keep that conversation to a time when we meet in person. But what I will touch on briefly is what makes us different.
The operative word here is ownership. B&G is not a shop where you come in, buy a bucket of dev hours, get an invoice, and that delimits the relationship we have between us. When you hire B&G you are entering into a partnership. We proud ourselves in taking ownership of the projects we engage in, we become an extension of you where we do what we do best so you are able to do what you do best. That sense of ownership is what drives us to produce the best quality work we can provide, and it’s what is usually lacking in other environments where developers are indifferent to the results and the success of your business, as long as they get paid. We will be in the trenches with you, the entire way, and we would not have it any other way.
So if you like what you hear, and you are looking for someone with experience, passion, and who will treat your baby as if it were his own, then please reach out to us. Check out our website for more details on our process and prior work examples: http://bearandgiraffe.com/.
