Consistency decides everything: 17 years of decisions behind Untile

On February 11th, Untile turns 17.

That milestone made me stop and look back, not at a timeline of projects or achievements, but at the decisions that shaped how the company actually works today.

I’ve never really done this before. But it felt like the right moment to share what helped us start, what forced us to change along the way, and what we learned we need to protect at all costs.

This is not an attempt to generalize or offer formulas. It’s an effort to make explicit the patterns, trade-offs, and mistakes that only become clear with time. Especially for founders who are starting now, or scaling their companies through growth stages, facing many of the same questions we faced 17 years ago.

Key takeaways

• Consistency is built through daily decisions, not isolated effort
• Structural changes shape ambition more than motivation ever will
• Distributed leadership is essential to scale without breaking
• Delayed decisions around people and alignment are the most expensive ones
• Respect for the team is a non-negotiable boundary

If I had to reduce 17 years of Untile to a single word, it would be consistency.

Not because everything went well, but because we kept insisting on the same standards over time. I learned early that being good once doesn’t mean much. A strong project doesn’t build a company. A moment of brilliance doesn’t create trust. And culture doesn’t survive on exceptions.

Consistency is work. It means showing up when enthusiasm fades. It means maintaining standards when no one is watching. And it means accepting that “good enough” is rarely enough if you want to build something that lasts.

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Where we came from, and why that matters

Untile started with a combination that was fragile and necessary at the same time: very little experience, a lot of persistence, and an ambition clearly bigger than our resources.

That early innocence mattered. At that stage, believing a bit more than the numbers suggested wasn’t irresponsibility. It was what allowed us to move forward at all. If we had relied only on spreadsheets, we probably wouldn’t have started. Excel is rarely optimistic, and early entrepreneurship requires belief before certainty.

Over time, that innocence fades. Reality becomes clearer and heavier. The challenge is not losing ambition as your understanding of consequences grows.

Looking back, that phase explains a lot about how we still operate today. It shaped our persistence and our refusal to stop at what is merely acceptable.

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From reflection to decisions

When I think about how we arrived where we are today, I don’t see a straight line. I see a series of decisions that gradually changed how the company thinks, operates, and grows.

I share these moments especially for people who are starting now or scaling their companies. Seventeen years ago, Untile began with four people, little experience, and a lot of ambition. Many of the questions founders face today are the same ones we faced back then, just in different contexts.

There are three decisions in particular that had a lasting impact on Untile and still shape how we work today.

Creating space before pushing for growth

One of the most underestimated decisions we made was moving offices.

At the time, we were seven or eight people. Space was limited, but the real limitation was mental. When space is tight, growth stops feeling possible. Your horizon shrinks without you noticing.

By moving, we didn’t just gain more room. We gave ourselves permission to think bigger. That taught me that ambition rarely expands through motivation alone. It expands when structural constraints are removed.

Applying what we knew to more complex problems

Another decisive moment was shifting from building websites to developing more complex digital products.

This wasn’t about abandoning the past. We carried years of accumulated knowledge with us: usability, technology, human behavior, and business expectations. We simply started applying that knowledge to harder problems.

Growth, for us, didn’t come from starting over. It came from deepening what we already knew how to do well.

Distributing leadership and responsibility

The most impactful decision, by far, was changing how leadership worked inside the company.

Moving away from decisions concentrated in one or two people and creating intermediate leadership with real autonomy changed everything. Responsibility became shared. Decision-making improved. And the company became more resilient, especially during difficult periods.

Companies grow in complexity faster than founders can handle alone. Without distributed leadership, risk accumulates at the top.

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The cost of waiting too long

Not everything is about making the right calls. Some of the most important lessons came from what we didn’t do in time.

When I think about mistakes, I don’t think about decisions we made and got wrong. The real cost came from decisions we delayed.

People who should have left earlier. Client relationships that were clearly misaligned but continued longer than they should have. Each delay felt manageable on its own. Together, they created friction, exhaustion, and loss of focus.

Today, recurring discomfort is a signal for me. When the same issue keeps coming back, it usually means the right moment to decide has already passed.

Over time, these delayed decisions forced me to confront something uncomfortable: some situations don’t get better with patience. They get heavier. More expensive. And harder to resolve.

That’s when it became clear that avoiding short-term discomfort often creates long-term damage. And that clarity is what pushed us to draw very explicit boundaries about what we are willing, and not willing, to accept.

What we will not compromise

There is one clear line we do not cross.

If a client or partner treats our people poorly, tries to impose an incompatible culture, or behaves as if our team exists to serve their hierarchy, the decision is immediate. It doesn’t matter how attractive the project looks.

Compromises like this damage everything else. Culture breaks first. Quality follows.

This boundary didn’t appear overnight. It emerged from years of experience and from a deeper principle that has been present since the beginning.

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What never changed

Across all the phases Untile went through, one thing never really changed.

We were never satisfied with doing only what was asked. For us, “minimum acceptable” was never the goal. From the beginning, there was a constant discomfort with results that could still be better.

This dissatisfaction was never about the work itself. It was about the outcome. About knowing something could be clearer, more robust, or better thought through, and not wanting to stop short of that.

Over time, this became part of our identity. Quality was never something added at the end. It was a standard applied throughout the process.

Technologies changed. Structures changed. Markets changed. But the refusal to accept “good enough” as an endpoint never did.

Having this clarity about what doesn’t change is what makes adaptation possible. Without it, every new technology or trend would force us to renegotiate who we are.

Adapting without losing what matters

Looking ahead, artificial intelligence is the biggest external change we are dealing with.

Clients now arrive with functional demos instead of briefs. Estimation, scope, and even our role are changing. We are investing heavily in AI and see it as an opportunity.

What this period is testing is not our ability to adopt tools, but our ability to preserve standards while everything around us changes.

Quality of the final outcome and respect for the people who build it remain the two criteria that guide our decisions. Those didn’t change with AI, and they won’t change because of it.

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What I hope remains true

When I look back at these 17 years, what stands out is not growth, technology, or even success. It’s the accumulation of small, consistent decisions taken over time.

Untile started with four people, very little experience, and a lot of ambition. Today, the context is different, but the responsibility is heavier. What hasn’t changed is the expectation we place on ourselves to do more than what is asked and to keep raising the bar on quality.

If someone reads this years from now, I hope they understand this: consistency is not about repeating the same actions. It’s about repeatedly choosing what matters, even when it’s uncomfortable.

That’s how companies endure. That’s how cultures stay intact. And that’s how we’ve tried to build Untile.

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