Camarounds' Journey as a Startup After 1 Year

by CamaroundsApril 5th, 2022

Too Long; Didn't Read

It seems as yesterday, but in Camarounds, we passed our first year mark. What an exciting voyage and we have only just “raised anchor”! We wanted to share our story with you. It is a story about challenge, hard work, flexibility and adaptation to grow and survive as startup. We have helped several thousand clients solve their needs and hundreds of professionals to reinvent themselves during the toughest times of the pandemic. And this is only the beginning. We are still a small team, but we want to go very, very far.

featured image - Camarounds' Journey as a Startup After 1 Year

It seems as if it was yesterday, but Camarounds has passed its first-year mark. What an exciting voyage and we have only just “raised anchor”! We wanted to share our story with you. It is a story about challenges, hard work, flexibility, and adaptation to grow and survive as a startup. Just take a look.

From the beginning… we’ve worked hard

Although we have been working for several months to organize the entire technology platform and conducting tests before our official launch, it is time to celebrate our first anniversary.

It has been 365 days full of adventures, anecdotes, crises, joys, and many hours of hard work.

In these twelve months, we have had time to do everything, many times exceeding our expectations, others not so much, but we have never lost our smile.

We have helped several thousand clients solve their needs and hundreds of professionals reinvent themselves during the toughest times of the pandemic.

On the other hand, we have raised our technological and marketing level with mergers and new additions to our team, added new corporate clients, and helped consolidated companies in Panama to sell more online by offering installation services for their products such as air conditioners. And this is only the beginning.

There is much to be proud of, but there is still much to do. We are still a small team, but we want to go very, very far and bring the Panamanian name of Camarounds to more countries. We have an incredible community of clients and Shrimp, the best team, and all the desire in the world to achieve it.

Let's go through this year together.

October

In October, we officially launched. It was an amazing moment. We couldn't believe it. In just a few hours we had hundreds of downloads and closed our first “camaround”. From our homes, we made a special toast… all the hard work was yet to come.

November

People were talking about Camarounds and this led us to Telemetro (one of Panama's main TV channels). It's not an everyday occurrence to be on TV, so we put on our uniform and put on our best face... with masks, yes!

December

After literally thousands of hours of work, we gave ourselves a few days of “rest”. To celebrate these holidays, we made a very special video.

January

It came almost as a surprise. Nobody was counting them, but there it was. Our 1,000th camaround appeared on our screens.

We couldn't believe it... already 1,000!

February

Camarounds falls in love. If you have tried it, you no longer want to contract services in any other way! So we decided to celebrate Valentine's Day in a very special way.

March

With hundreds of requests and quotes coming in every week, we at Camarounds were amassing a lot of data. One of our values is transparency and we decided to create a Price Guide that we would share for free with our users, clients, and professionals included.

The objective is very clear: Camarounds wants to help professionals and clients find a fair price for their services and we believe that this was a good way to achieve it.

April

People from all over Panama found us on social media or through Google. Many requests came from Chiriquí, but we did not have professionals registered there… so we created a team in charge of “Mission David”.

In about three weeks, we were working on and resolving requests in the second-largest city in the country.

May

It was time to raise the bar, both technologically-wise and in marketing. Camarounds had shown that it had a minimum viable product. We met the Tareazos team and love was instantaneous. Two teams that are obsessed with one thing: if you can order a vehicle in one click with Uber, why not an electrician, a plumber, or a bricklayer.

There has to be a better way to do it. Alone we could go faster, perhaps, but together we will go further.

Joining forces is the way

June

We wanted to continue making payments easier for our customers, so we started accepting Clave Card payments through our apps. Clave is a very popular payment method in Panama.

July

We had a lot of requests for remodels in the previous weeks and decided to launch a series of seminars, which we have posted for free on YouTube.

The bathroom remodeling webinar was memorable, but we did many more. We also discovered that clients wanted to know who our professionals were and we began to introduce them through interviews where they told us about their skills.

August

We went back on television. This time on TVN Emprende (another key TV channel in Panama), as well as on radio stations.

Camarounds reappeared on television.

September

The momentum of the new Camarounds was beginning to show. Our app was more robust every day and we were adding more and more features. The results of the new team were already evident. So, we decided it was time to refresh our image: new “pincers” for new challenges.

October

One year at last. Full of surprises and emotions. To celebrate, we heard feedback from our customers and decided to launch Pinza Cash. As of October 25, 2021, any client will receive a 2% balance on all contracts made through Camarounds. That balance does not expire and can be used on any service!

What a year!