Clean up your code with Vacuumlabs!

BERLIN, Germany - Pangea is thrilled to present one of our most valued vendors, Vacuumlabs, a fintech-focused software development company with a mission to “create delightful digital products that empower their customers to succeed.” Part of the Pangea universe since 2018, we are happy to have such an expert in their field on board!

“We put the tech in Fintech”

Aristotle famously said that “nature abhors a vacuum”, an axiom that holds especially true in the worlds of finance and technology: if there is a gap in any given space, the market will invariably create something to fill it. So it is with Vacuumlabs, a software development company that has found its niche as the go-to partner for creating robust, secure, and lighting quick fintech applications for dozens of players in the banking industry.

Founded in 2012 in Bratislava, over the years Vacuumlabs has expanded to encompass seven main offices (primarily located in the Central European countries of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary), augmented by a slew of satellite offices spanning the globe from California to China! When we spoke with Vacuumlabs in 2018, the company was already experiencing an astounding 245% year-over-year growth in revenue and today has certainly exceeded their target of a further 120% increase.

Such success is a sure indicator of quality, so it should come as no surprise that they earned an excellent overall Pangea Score of 8.4/10.0. So what’s their secret? Read on as we break down the different components of this well-engineered machine!

A Confident Confluence of Coders

Team members proudly representing Vacuumlabs at a conference

As a global company with over 250 employees around the world, Vacuumlabs is the definition of remote flexibility and decentralization. Yet somehow, the company has managed to meld this collection of “multicultural and unique individuals [into] one cohesive family”, per CEO Samuel Hapák. He continues, “It's not only about material benefits but also about the way we challenge ourselves to step out of our comfort zone.”

Of course, there is no shortage of benefits at Vacuumlabs. A plethora of perks are available to employees, including chill-out zones with a full library of books and games, access to sport and wellness centers (including an in-house gym at the company HQ), and company retreats in remote locations. Team members are given the freedom to connect work and personal life but are also encouraged to keep pushing themselves through 15 paid self-education days and support for their side projects.

One of the most impressive of such projects is ReactiveConf, the annual conference that bridges the gap between tech and business. Back in 2015, some of Vacuum’s developers had immersed themselves in learning everything they could about the then-novel framework React, and came up with a crazy idea: start their own tech conference to share their knowledge with the rest of the IT community. In just three months, they threw together the very first for over 500 attendees!

Since that fateful day, this passion project has evolved into one of the largest tech conferences in Europe, welcoming thousands of attendees and numerous high-profile industry experts each year in their current location in Prague. When a simple side project achieves such heights, it’s clear that Vacuumlabs is capable of just about anything, commanding the respect of their employees, peers, and clients.

This Vacuum Doesn’t Suck!

In their 8+ years of operation, Vacuumlabs has helped over 60 clients across the globe, including major players in the banking, retail, and travel industries like Erste Sparkasse, solarisBank, Standard Chartered, and Kiwi.com. Among their clients—most of which are located in financial and tech hubs like London, Hong Kong, and Berlin—Vacuumlabs is recognized as a stable, long-term partner. This is reflected in their outstanding Pangea Client Score of 8.4/10.0, which includes notably high marks in Technical Expertise (8.9/10.0) and UI/UX Design (8.6/10.0).

But numbers don’t tell the whole story, let’s hear about Vacuumlabs directly from the customers themselves:

“Partnerships are a key part of our strategy. Getting the right talent onboard is critical for a digitally-savvy operation and so the bank’s partnership with Vacuumlabs has been fruitful.”

- Deniz Güven, CEO @ Mox Bank by Standard Chartered

“Working with VacuumLabs has been a great way for us to build our product quickly. It’s given us the right people, the right skills and at the right pace. It’s been a great help in making us a world-class product.”

- CEO @ Seed to Series A Startup

“Vacuumlabs has been a critical partner to EMURGO and Cardano, by providing us the flexibility of an extended team that feels and works as one of our own. We are pleased to have found a team that is competent, responsible and understands complex topics in crypto. We see ourselves working with Vacuumlabs for a long time.”

- Nicolas Arqueros, CTO @ Emurgo

“Vacuumlabs improved and increased the efficiency of any aspect of the project they touched, and the finished product was significantly better than the version we set out to build.”

- CTO @ Series B++ Startups

Members of Vacuumlabs enjoying a cook-off challenge

A Full-Service Partner

As might be expected from a fintech-oriented company, Vacuumlabs are well-versed in everything from digital wallets to blockchain and cryptocurrency. This means they are capable of engineering mobile and web applications, full-stack development, data pipelines, and backend (micro)services. From an infrastructure perspective, they are more than capable of DevOps, Cloud computing, automation, while on the product design front they are masters of UX/UI design and rapid prototyping.

The list of their core competencies is seemingly endless, and includes languages (Javascript, Clojure, Python, Kontin, etc.), frameworks (React, Next.js, Django, etc.), cloud (AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, etc.), and databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, etc.)—and that doesn’t even include their legacy knowledge of tech like PHP or Java, and the services they are exploring like Flutter. To see their full tech stack, check out their Tech focus page on the Pangea profile or dig into the Data room.

But beyond their considerable technical know-how, Vacuumlabs offers several other tangible services to support their clients. For instance, Vacuumlabs developed Spark, a design sprint that helps rapidly upscale a fledgling project from theoretical ideas into a concrete roadmap towards an MVP. Similarly, they created Sparring, an industry-specific service to provide legal and strategy project support to local tech visionaries. Such services are reflections of Vacuumlabs’ client-first mentality, according to Samuel:

“Just building software doesn't make us different. What does is that we are the advisors, guides and executors for you as our customer. [...] Our job is to make your vision come to life faster and in the end, make the product delivery much more cost-effective.”

Indeed, dedication to their customers is a clear reflection of Vacuumlabs’ many company values, which make for quite an impressive list:

• Integrity over profit
• We care for each other
• Greatness is worth sacrifices
• Taking risks and accepting responsibilities
• Choosing battles wisely
• Arguments matter more than ranks

With such a principled ethos and client-oriented perspective, we think Vacuumlabs would make the perfect partner for anyone looking to make a splash in the world of fintech. If you are at all curious about contracting this impressive software development company, why not head over to their Engagement Page and get in touch!