10 Years of VF

THE VIRTUAL FORGE ARE CELEBRATING TEN YEARS THIS MONTH AND AS WE REACH THIS MILESTONE WE WANTED TO SHARE SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE MOMENTS.

The Virtual Forge was founded in October 2010 and as we reflect on how far we've come we wanted to document and share some of our key highlights from this time.

Ten years ago Matt and Garrett formed VF with the goal of creating a company where people wanted to work, respected each other and created great and beautiful software. They wanted to bridge the gap between design and development and come to a common understanding, creating more cohesively designed and developed products.

The objective was to form a team of bright, creative and inspiring professionals who were keen, able to challenge and were sufficiently enthused by the love of their daily creations, whichever part of the business they joined.

We're now a global team, spanning 3 continents, with a client base we're immensely proud of.

THE EARLY DAYS...

The Virtual Forge was founded in Bath in October 2010 by Garrett and Matt, but actually our story begins before then, in a small town in America in 1987 where The XL Group was founded. VF acquired The XL Group in 2017 and this is now our Data Centre of Excellence in Philadelphia.

Initially VF was a very small team based in the UK, including our current Head of DevOps, Christian Backlund. This quickly grew and in the following years VF opened offices in locations including:

An office in India in 2013 An office in Lisbon in 2014 An office (The XL Group Acquisition) in 2017

The home of our UK operation is now in the Glove Factory, Bradford-on-Avon, with offices in London and Warwick.

THE EARLY WEBSITE DESIGNS...

The bit between the beginning and now is a long story, full of lessons learned, successes and failures. We’re delighted to say there are many more successes than failures, and we’d like to thank everyone who has, at various stages in The Virtual Forge’s history, played an important role in getting us to where we are now.

NOW…

We’re a global software company and are proud of the development & UX, data and cloud services we provide our clients. With over 100 people working from the UK, to Dubai, to Bratislava, Portugal and the US, we truly are virtual by name and virtual by nature and this year has proved that our team can really pull together in what has been an incredibly disrupted year.

So here is to the next decade of VF and we’ll just leave this here with a simple sign-off: here’s to whatever comes next, we’re certain it’ll be big.

TEAM QUOTES:

“It's all about the VF family.” Anita Kelly

“10 years ago I joined VF on the promise that it would never get boring, and whilst my job changed, my hair is longer and we’ve grown from 4 to 90+ people, some things remained the same. It’s the same fantastic culture, wonderful people and daily opportunities to learn. Boredom can wait for another 10 years.” Christian Backlund

“Lovely people always willing to help.” Ebele Maduka

“I love all of the brilliant people I get to work with, solving hard business problems, delivering creative solutions, and keeping my own evolution going. Any great job is great because of the people. We have the best people.” Danielle Volz

“I love the collaborative approach, ‘Globally’ we are one massive team spread so far around the world but yet so effective in coming together to output some amazing work! Compared to our giant Global clients we may not have headcounts of thousands but we are super effective!” Natasha Brown

“VF is an extraordinary company, period. It is hard to put this into words because I love everything in here. But the most important things for me are the talented and awesome employees that are our family and the reason I get up everyday and also our company culture - familiar, fun, based in mutual respect and recognition. I’m a proud VFer. Happy 10th Anniversary VF!” Tiago Vintém