For over a decade, we have built up our expertise and delivered a world proven, scalable Platform for small businesses. Along the way we’ve learned a lot and we’re proud of how far we’ve come. Here, CEO Simon Best shares his highlights, lessons and aspirations for BaseKit on this, our 15th Birthday.

BaseKit began as a small web agency, creating websites and apps for local businesses. With a drive to work faster and be more versatile to take on more clients every month, the business quickly evolved to execute a much bigger vision to help entrepreneurs build their own businesses online worldwide.

“It’s been an incredible journey bringing the vision we had to life. We always wanted to create great products that millions of people would use every day, and I’m prouder than ever to see that happening 15 years later, and to be able to continue to build upon that vision going forwards.”

What’s been your biggest highlight with the Platform you’ve built?

In recent years BaseKit has outgrown its website builder roots and now offers a suite of digital tools that work seamlessly together to help people start and grow their business online. 

“It’s very difficult to build multiple products that are powerful but genuinely simple to use. I’d say my biggest highlight has been accomplishing just that with BaseKit.” says Simon.

What’s been your biggest business highlight?

BaseKit delivers software to small businesses exclusively via global partnerships with large businesses. We now place our tech in the hands of entrepreneurs in over 40 markets.  

The business has worked hard to build up a portfolio of world renowned, ambitious brands who trust us to deliver to their customers day in day out. 

“I’m super proud to be partnered with big global brands who trust BaseKit’s products and people, including Telefónica, Aruba, Fasthosts, Miss Group, Etisalat, and many more!”

What’s been your personal highlight?

BaseKit has taken great care to nurture great people and give them the best chance of bringing their best self to work each day. A culture driven by Simon. 

“Personally, I’m proud of the culture we’ve built at BaseKit. We’ve worked really hard to try to make it a great place to work, where everybody loves what they’re working on and has the opportunity to make a big impact. We have an amazing team who embrace this culture and bring lots of energy and passion.”

“I love seeing everybody bring new energy, new ideas, and new ways of working. It’s humbling that so many hugely talented people have joined BaseKit’s journey.”

And it is this team that inspired and helped to deliver on our ambition to be a B Corporation, joining thousands of other companies reinventing business by pursuing purpose as well as profit.

“I want to build a business that has a positive impact on people and the planet. Our certification reflects our fantastic team’s ongoing commitment to this movement and I couldn’t be more proud. We will continue to embed B Corp’s principles across the business, giving careful consideration to the social and environmental issues of every decision we make.”

What’s been your biggest lesson?

“I’ve personally learned a lot about leadership. There is only so much you can learn about leadership from books and courses, the real test is doing it and learning from your successes and failures along the way.”

When you look at the future, what is your biggest motivator? 

Considering BaseKit in the tech industry as it stands now, versus how the industry was 15 years ago, the company has evolved hugely when it comes to driving its mission and purpose, and that is one of the most exciting prospects for its CEO.

“We’ve refocused our strategy to align more with our values of democratising technology, which to us means putting our digital tools in the hands of people the world over, including those that might usually be underserved. I’m super excited to see where we can take our technology, and the impact it can have on the world around us.”

What are you looking forward to most?

“Moving even faster! We have big ambitions for the future in all areas of the business and we’re always trying to move more efficiently and more effectively. We’re well into our teens but as a business, we work hard to keep a startup ethos.”

What’s your vision for the next 5 years?

We’re on a mission for global tech democracy for small businesses and realising this mission means living and breathing our ‘easy does it’ mantra. This means making the BaseKit Platform super available and super simple to not only reach new types of partners in new markets, but help these partners to grow delivering BaseKit to the global masses. 

In the coming years the company is committed to executing and further evolving our Connect Vision, while embracing AI and exposing our API to create new and exciting ways for a huge variety of businesses to use BaseKit to help small businesses. 

“Our Connect vision is designed to enable people to work with BaseKit tools alongside other products and services in a seamlessly integrated way. We know, for example, people use social media and marketing tools alongside their website, so my vision is to make that super simple.”

“AI is a core part of our product vision. We deliberately didn’t rush AI features because we wanted to rethink how people can run a business online using AI rather than just retrofit as others have done. More exciting news on this to come!”

“We are exposing our API in interesting ways to enable the BaseKit Platform to be used by other SaaS companies and developers to easily integrate websites, e-commerce, bookings, domains – everything a business owner needs to succeed, and nothing they don’t.”

We’ve built a robust, simple and scalable Platform, and nurtured a fantastic team committed to evolving and delivering BaseKit on our road to global tech democracy for small businesses. It’s now time to double down on exploration, innovation and world domination – watch this space! 

Happy Birthday BaseKit.