A decade of making HR tech human
On March 1, 2016, I sat down at a desk in Berlin – a custom-built 4m² office squeezed into my bedroom – and started my solopreneurial journey as "Connecting the dots. – Creative Studio".
Not Octily. Not yet.
I was convinced that connecting dots was what I did best. Making sense of scattered pieces – design, code, strategy, people – and turning them into something coherent. Great name, I thought.
Turns out, so did every parent searching for children's activity books. And Steve Jobs, who used the phrase in his famous Stanford speech. If you Googled "connecting the dots" in 2016, you got cute images for kids and a commencement address. Not a one-person creative studio in Berlin. 😅
So I went looking for something shorter. Something ownable. I wanted a five-character domain – most four-character ones were long gone. And because 8 has always been my favorite number (it's a multiple of 2, the foundation of everything in computing, and an infinity symbol when you tip it on its side), an octopus felt right. Eight arms. Adaptability. Intelligence. A little weird. Octily was born. I even grabbed the Libyan domain octi.ly, just because I could.
Ten years later, that one-person idea has turned into a team of 11 people spread across 5 countries and 3 continents. We've delivered over 250 projects for 97+ organizations around the world. Not bad for a company that started with a laptop, a Wi-Fi connection, and one stubborn belief: employee experiences deserve great design.
I'd never written a contract before. Figuring out sales, finance, legal, HR, creative direction, and a dozen other departments on my own? Steep learning curve. Still climbing, if I'm being honest.
What we actually do (in plain language)
We customize Cornerstone OnDemand platforms. Login pages, welcome screens, learning portals, career sites, onboarding flows – if an employee sees it, we make it better. We design, build, and sometimes rethink entire digital HR experiences from the ground up.
Along the way, we added creative services: video production, photography, branding, content creation, and internal communication campaigns. Our clients needed more than just platform work, so we grew to meet them.
And then there's the Octily Content Editor (OCE) – our flagship product that empowers HR teams to manage pages independently. No developers needed. No tickets. No waiting three weeks for a text change. It started as a simple tool and turned into something we're genuinely proud of.
The milestones that mattered
2016 – Berlin. One person, a freshly renamed company, and a lot to prove. The early years were about showing that customization could actually drive adoption and engagement. Spoiler: it could. Convincing people of that was the harder part.
2019 – The core team forms. Daniel Boberg joined as CTO, followed by Anna Neiswestnich as Design Lead. Suddenly, Octily had engineering depth and a visual identity that matched its ambitions. I was no longer the only person on the team call.
2022–2023 – Going global. Simen-Ling La joined from Germany. Susan Smit, a Dutch original came on as Senior Project Manager, stationed in Singapore at the time. The team was no longer Berlin-based – it was everywhere. Which meant more alarm clocks, more Slack messages at odd hours, and somehow, better work.
2024–2025 – The expansion. Sanjeev Singh based in Spain. Bertrand Dupont from France. Fernanda Carnevali working from Berlin, orginally from Brazil. Lin van der Slikke from the Netherlands. Each person brought a new perspective, a new market, and a reason to check yet another time zone before scheduling a call.
2025–2026 – Growing into roles. Anna became our CDO. Susan stepped up to Chief Strategy & Operating Officer. People who joined for one role grew into something bigger – because the company needed it and because they were ready. That's the kind of thing you can't plan for. You just have to build a place where it happens.
2026 – Today. 11 people. 5 countries. 3 continents. A product portfolio that now spans Cornerstone customization, creative service and, fresh from the press, Cornerstone MicroApps. And this article, which still feels a little surreal to write.
(Actually, I wrote most of it on Sunday. Nobody wants to work on their company anniversary. 😅)
Five things we learned in ten years
1. Remote works – if you actually commit to it.
We've been fully remote from day one. Not as a pandemic pivot, not as a perk. It's how we're built. I've worked remotely since 2014 – long before it was a LinkedIn talking point. We never needed a physical office, and honestly, collaboration got more intense without one. No hallway gossip, no accidental meetings that eat your afternoon. When you can't rely on proximity, you communicate with intention. It gives us access to talent anywhere and forces clarity into everything we do.
2. Niche beats broad.
We're the only creative studio fully dedicated to Cornerstone OnDemand. That specificity is not a limitation – it's our strength. We know the platform inside out, so we ship faster and with fewer surprises. When your clients' Cornerstone team says "that's not possible," we usually say "actually..."
3. Design is a business decision.
A well-designed login page doesn't just look good. It drives adoption. It reduces support tickets. It tells employees that their experience matters. We've spent ten years proving that with data – and ten years watching the "it's just an internal tool" argument slowly lose ground.
4. Small teams can do big things.
We've never been large, and we've never needed to be. What we lack in headcount, we make up for in focus, speed, and a genuine dislike of unnecessary meetings. 97+ multinational clients, 20+ million users impacted – with a team that fits around one dinner table. (A long one, but still.)
5. The work has to be fun.
Our mascot is an octopus. Our chatbot is called Auto Mate. Every team member has a personalized "Octi" character. We name things after sea creatures and celebrate Octopus Day every October 8. Life is too short for boring corporate culture, even when the work is serious.
What I got wrong (and right)
I'll save you the highlight reel. Here's what actually happened:
I underestimated how hard it is to run a business when you're also the one doing the work. For years, I was the designer, developer, salesperson, accountant, project manager, and occasional customer support agent. Sometimes all before lunch.
I overestimated how quickly the market would understand what we do. "You customize Cornerstone?" – that sentence needed a lot of explaining in 2016. Less so in 2026, but there are still moments.
What I got right: betting on quality over scale. We never chased headcount. Never took funding. Never said yes to work that didn't fit. That stubbornness cost us some short-term revenue but built something durable. 97+ clients came to us mostly through word of mouth and Cornerstone's own teams recommending us. That's the kind of growth I can sleep well with.
What comes next
We're not done. Cornerstone MicroApps – our first standalone product – launched this year, bringing data-rich applications directly into the platforms we know so well. We're expanding our creative services. And we're still looking for people who care about craft, collaboration, and the occasional ocean pun.
We also gave back again through 1% for the Planet – 1% of Octily's revenue to environmental organizations. Because four kids at home are a pretty solid motivation to not ruin the planet. 💚
To every client who trusted a small remote studio with their platform. To every partner who recommended us when it would have been easier to go with a bigger name. To every team member who believed that enterprise HR tech could actually look good and feel human.
Thank you. Genuinely.
Now let's keep going, shall we? 🐙💚
– Rob and the Octily team