Upgrade Your Digital Service with Premium Minds
BERLIN, Germany - Pangea is pleased to present Premium Minds, Portuguese software development pros with a passion for perfectly executed products! Part of our universe since 2018, the company has been a valued partner for us, always providing premium service and sharp minds. Let’s learn a bit more about these Iberian development geniuses!
Proven Excellence
Nestled in the heart of Lisbon, software development house Premium Minds has been crafting excellent digital products for Portugal (and beyond) for nearly twenty years now. From a small handful of developers back in 2002 to a multi-disciplinary team of over 100 employees today, the company is constantly evolving and optimizing their business practices. According to CEO Pedro Dias:
“We’re never standing still. We’re constantly seeking and experimenting with different product development best practices to improve the team’s happiness and how we integrate all of our cross-functional skills [...]”
Over the years, the company has accrued a slew of accolades across Iberia: it was awarded the PME Excelência from Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (IAPMEI) on multiple occasions and was twice named as one of the Best Companies to Work by Exame Magazine. In addition to winning the "Excelência no Trabalho 2014" award by Diário Económico / (Human Resources Magazine), one of their products—Telpark—was named app of the year by the newspaper Expansión after being deployed in 20 cities across Spain.
We welcomed Premium Minds to the Pangea universe back in 2018, when the company was experiencing a 30% year-over-year growth in revenue which they projected to continue into the foreseeable future with at least 65% of their sales coming from the European and US (a number that has no doubt increased in recent years as the company continues to expand into new marketplaces). This all helped earn them a Pangea Score of 8.6/10.0, a notable rating that just scratches the surface of what sets these Portuguese professionals apart!
Humans All The Way Down
When a new employee joins Premium Minds, the very first thing they do is have a conversation with Rodrigo Dias, Premium Minds’ Head of People, about the importance of three core values: honesty, respect, and responsibility. Articulating these tenets is the foundation for creating a collaborative and supportive company culture, per Mr. Dias:
“We thrive in creating friendships between workers at Premium Minds. Spending more than one-third of our lives with the people, we work with means we need to invest in our relationships with them.”
As a culture-driven company, Premium Minds understands that “freedom brings happiness” and offers their employees a wealth of avenues to express and develop themselves personally and professionally. In addition to game nights, holiday dinners, and a company football team, employees and external experts are frequently invited to deliver Premium Talks to share knowledge with their peers. At the same time, staff can reward each other with the company’s own internal virtual coin, Kudos, which can be traded for various rewards.
The employees of Premium Minds spending some quality time outside of the office
But perhaps most whimsically, the company hosts a monthly Creative Day where employees can experiment and play with new ideas and generate value through fun (and useful) projects. Some of the office innovations to come from these informal labs are Slack-enabled coffee requests, a bathroom availability monitoring app, and the fantastically named “StrogONoff” service to remotely control computer power usage.
Small, amusing projects like these help keep the team connected, helping the company maintain an impressive 95% first-year retention rate and average team seniority of five years. With a full 90% of the staff promoted each year, Premium Minds rewards its people and fosters a congenial atmosphere that almost feels more like a family than a workplace:
“We know that companies with an influential culture perform better. We also know that culture is a product of human interaction. At Premium Minds, we’re committed to having incredible culture, that’s why we all work together at our offices. It almost feels like home!”
Premium Service (With A Smile)
Premium Minds provides only the best service to their clients, who range from big-name commercial brands like Vodafone and Heineken to non-profit social organizations like the Make A Wish foundation or Fundação EDP. They’ve worked across various industries, including telecoms, travel, health, manufacturing, and retail.
Based on our interviews with a number of their clients back in 2018, the company scored remarkably consistent across all the relevant KPIs: from an 8.9/10.0 in technical expertise to an 8.7 and 8.8/10.0 in process and business maturity, respectively. Premium Minds has clearly earned the trust of their many happy customers, as evidenced by the praise they’ve been given:
“Our collaboration with PM [has lasted] for several years, and what we like best, other than their availability and spirit of commitment, is their creative ability which helps us address a wide range of situations.”
- Formosinho Sanchez, Board of Directors @ Empark
“We were surprised by the excellent capacity for technological innovation at Premium Minds complemented by a deep knowledge of the evolution trends of IT architectures and systems.”
- Head of Innovation @ Enterprise/Corporation
“In Premium Minds, we have a highly competent and flexible partner, that delivered the project within the proposed schedule and investment budget, whereupon the final product was appreciated by all of the system’s users.”
- Innovation System Manager @ Enterprise/Corporation
Sharp Minds (Who Love Super Mario)
“Our values are: Empowerment, Autonomy, Quality, and Happiness.”
From whiteboarding to long-term support, Premium Minds has the staff and capabilities to provide customers with anything they need. Their project managers and in-house agile coaches can guide cradle-to-launch strategy planning, while their team of designers, engineers, and architects provide top-notch design and construction. All the while, their team of data scientists can support and analyze growth on an ongoing basis.
The team working hard to improve their physical and mental skills at work
Their tech stack is as comprehensive as anyone’s, with their engineers well versed in various operating systems (iOS, Android, Linux), databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB), and languages (Java, JavaScript, Angular, React, C#, Scala, etc.). Their official services include UX/UI Design, software development/QA, IT operations, and DevOps (using tools like Kubernetes and AWS).
In terms of engagement models, we here at Pangea feel that the Premium Minds team is best suited for New Product Development, Team Augmentation, or Project Handover, and can attest to the company’s speedy timeline from kick-off through development. All things considered, the company develops stable, scalable, and secure products that are elegantly designed with the end-user always in mind. In closing, we return once more to CEO Pedro, who sums up his company as follows:
“We excel at making software: whether it’s a customer-facing product or the hidden machinery that supports our clients’ businesses. From Portugal to the world, our team has the know-how needed to power you at every stage of your project development lifecycle: from scratch to launch. ”