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Serokell has recently been ranked among the top 100 fastest-growing companies in the world by absolute revenue growth on the Clutch platform.

Serokell Ranked in Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in 2021 by Clutch

Serokell has recently been ranked among the top 100 fastest-growing companies in the world by absolute revenue growth on the [Clutch](https://clutch.co/) platform. 

Clutch is an online aggregator that conducts research and regularly publishes lists of top B2B companies in various domains. They provide a data-driven field guide to making business decisions by doing independent research and interviewing real clients. 

For more details, read the full [press release](https://clutch.co/press-releases/special-report-recognizes-top-b2b-service-providers-sustained-fast-growth-2021).

Serokell at NixCon 2019

Did you attend NixCon 2019? Read our report to get more information about what happened at the conference and our latest project for the Nix ecosystem.

On October 25-27, we participated and were gold sponsors in [NixCon 2019](https://2019.nixcon.org/), a community-oriented conference for Nix and NixOS. NixCon is one of our most favourite events, one to which we keep returning over and over again to meet with the Nix community and help push the technology forward. 


## Main Conference for Nix Enthusiasts 

![NixCon is an annual conference where Nix users share their experiences of working with and improving Nix and its ecosystem.](/files/vl/vl16r5nx.nixcon2019.jpg) 

This year, the conference was set in Brno, a lovely city in the Czech Republic, and consisted of two days of talks and one day of hacking, aptly called Hackday.

On the second day, Serokell’s engineer Lars Jellema presented his work regarding Nix: a Nix expression formatter, nixfmt. 

You can try it on your expressions at [https://nixfmt.serokell.io/](https://nixfmt.serokell.io/) and get it on [GitHub](https://github.com/serokell/nixfmt).

![Lars Jellema presenting nixfmt](/files/6j/6jambvuj.20191026_112902_(1).jpg)

If you want to enjoy a part of the NixCon experience, you can watch talks from the conference (including our own) on [NixCon's Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUG9aGYYCY8&feature=youtu.be&t=5596). 

## Innovating for Nix

It was a pleasure for our members to both listen to innovative talks on Friday and Saturday, and hack on Nix on the Hackday on Sunday. 

**Some highlights:** 

*   We had the opportunity to hack on a GUI installer for NixOS based on the Calamares framework. This spawned a whole project that our engineer Lars is still working on! 
*   We got to see people get NixOS working on their Android devices, that’s amazing. 

![NixOS on a mobile device](/files/5t/5t3mtoe2.20191025_192101_(1).jpg)

*   We got to meet with Nix people at the wonderful places and restaurants of Vienna and Brno. These evening and night-time conversations are, obviously, the best part about conferences.  

Thanks to everyone who participated, see you next year! 

![CTO on an electric scooter](/files/4w/4wdamhbc.20191025_211229_(1).jpg)

We Are Hiring a Haskell Team Lead

We’re seeking an experienced software engineer to supervise a team of Haskell developers.

Serokell is a fast-growing, fully-remote software development company that works on innovative solutions for complex problems in fields like biotech and data science. We’re packed full of adventurous, curious, and inclusive folks that want to build cutting-edge software with modern technologies like functional programming.

We’re seeking an experienced software engineer to supervise a team of Haskell developers. Our work is not only limited to Haskell development, so you will sometimes have to delve into and supervise other fantastic things, such as **research**, **frontend,** or **packaging**.


## **Duties**

Your primary responsibility will be to be the leader of a Haskell devotee team; the person eager to **review solutions**, **advise**, and **propose your own ideas**.

As a team lead, you will be responsible for:

*   **weekly** **status updates** and **monthly reports** to the customer
*   reviewing **PRs** and modifying code if necessary
*   assessing every member of your team by providing **fair** **feedback**
*   helping **team members** achieve their career goals
*   evaluating **top candidates** in case of team expansion
*   supervising **research** in the project you're leading


## **Requirements**

*   **solid understanding** of Haskell or a **strong will** to learn it
*   previous **experience** with managing software development teams
*   **spine of steel** for robust software development
*   **capacity** to review a lot of code
*   **determination** to manage issues
*   **openness** to new languages – be it Elixir, OCaml, or TypeScript.

Last but not least! We hope you like **Nix** as much as we do. We use Nix for plenty of things, although we do sometimes use other platforms like Docker too. Luckily, we have a dedicated team of Nix experts who are always happy to help.

By joining Serokell, you’ll become a part of a warm community of ingenious engineers, computer scientists, designers, marketing experts, and other inventive people. You will be able to take part in ambitious projects that work on building the next generation of computer software, try out crazy initiatives unhindered by bureaucracy or judgment, and have fun in our Slack channels that range from #music to #butthurt (did we mention the huge custom emoji set?).

If you’re ready for the adventure of your life, contact us via email: jobs@serokell.io.

How to Win at Web Summit

How to survive and accomplish your goals in large conferences like Web Summit? Roman Alterman gives 6 tips from his experience at Web Summit 2019 and a multitude of other conferences.

_Web Summit is huge. According to official statistics, in 2019 it was attended by 70 469 people. It is an experience of its own kind._

_I’ll describe. Just after entering the first out of five pavilions you are shocked by the multitude of booths and visitors—you look from side to side and think what the strategy should be: should you visit enormous booths of IT-giants like Microsoft or SAP or is it better to start by covering tons of startups all around the area? At the end of the article, I hope you’ll know what to do._
## 6 tips to succeed at your next Web Summit

On November 2-5, the CEO, COO and CBDO of Serokell visited [Web Summit 2019](https://websummit.com/). The event was full of smart people, bright ideas and brilliant innovations. For us as a team, it was a wonderful experience and I would love to share my thoughts about it in a way that’s helpful for first time visitors. 
 
Therefore, I will list a couple of points which can be useful if you are considering taking part in Web Summit or a large global tech conference like it. Let’s go!  


### 1. Know your goal

Before coming to the conference you should spend enough time on preparation to feel confident during the event. 

![Can you feel the confidence?](/files/80/806nfh2x.20191107_175159.jpg)

Remember, everything is possible here. Before coming, you should formulate your precise goal for this week and work in its direction. There are many opportunities: getting new clients, raising funds, searching for outsourcing services, headhunting and testing your hypotheses about the market and its participants.  You could spend all week just working on one thing from this list, and if you are well prepared, the probability of achieving your initial goal becomes very high. 

### 2. Know who participates

The important thing to mention is that Web Summit is more for CEOs and business development executives. As a result, don't count on a high level of technical talks there—it's more about business.

![A look inside Web Summit 2019](/files/au/aukiaf05.20191105_173512.jpg)

Regarding the booths, there are several types of them. Startups have the smallest ones and you can find a huge amount of them in each pavilion according to their industry: FinTech, HealthCare, Social, Security and lots of other fields are amongst the options. 

Besides startups, there are bigger booths for sustainable businesses like JetBrains and different infrastructures like accelerators, hiring aggregators, VCs and even countries. Huge zones are for industry giants like Booking.com, Lenovo, Amazon, Siemens, Porsche, SAP, and dozens of other market leaders. If you are attending for business purposes, there is probably no point to spend much time near the biggest booths. Representatives there usually don’t have the power to make any decisions, they just present their products.  

A very important thing: booths are only the tip of the WebSummit iceberg, thousands of interesting people and projects come in as attendees. The best way to reach them out is through preliminary search and the event-specific app.

### 3. Schedule in advance


Therefore, you should schedule meetings and find interesting opportunities in advance.  
 
Go through the endless list of participants on the Summit website, get in touch with proper ones and arrange a cup of coffee before coming to Lisbon. That way, you will be able to spend all 3 days efficiently.

### 4. Use the Web Summit app

Don’t underestimate the application, it is an instrument that brings you a lot of opportunities. It is key to becoming a part of a huge social network. It’s simple.  
 
1. Fill in your profile and become visible to other participants. 

2. After that, find any person who is interesting to you, propose him a meeting and schedule it right inside the application using the internal calendar.

What is more, you can form your own schedule by choosing interesting speeches and presentations and combining them with your meetings. The application will always notify you about the upcoming activity linking it with the Summit map. You can even use it before and after the event to get in touch with anyone you did not have time to catch in Lisbon or just stay connected to a big base of potential partners.

![Form your own schedule by combining both speeches and business meetings](/files/kk/kk9jijxs.20191106_163318.jpg)

All participants have a [QR code](https://www.adobe.com/express/feature/image/qr-code-generator) on their badge. After talking to anybody, just scan his QR with an app and send him a “Hi!”— that would help you to keep in touch. Probably, this is the first event that is free of business cards. Forget about carrying kilos of carton and remembering who’s card it actually is: just scan the badge and continue the negotiations in the application chat.

### 5. Feel the rhythm of the Night Summit 

After a day in the fields, Night Summit begins. Every evening all participants go to the best party locations. Streets are closed, with access only for people with WS badges. It’s an enormous networking event under the dark sky and an awesome opportunity to build business relations informally. We have to admit that it is not so easy—the amount of people is very large, and as a result, everybody is grouping and finding a lead becomes quite tough. To succeed, you need to be a networking shark. 
 
Besides the official Night Summit, there are lots of side events sponsored by different companies and projects. In our opinion, most of them are not worth visiting—descriptions are brilliant, locations are interesting, but, frankly speaking, it is very hard to compete with the official one. Visiting a side event could be efficient only if you have a specific interest in it. If not, we believe that spending time at Night Summit is much more reasonable. 


### 6. Be prepared for the crowd

The only negative thing I can mention is also the best one: the number of visitors. 

![Visitors at the event](/files/o4/o4j2scdc.20191106_124824.jpg)

Be ready to spend a lot of time in lines of differing shape and size: to enter the location, drop off your bag, get a meal or get inside the stage zone. However, there are a few life hacks which can make life easier.  
 
* Don’t forget to go through the registration at the airport just after landing in Lisbon. There is a huge tent with volunteers which can help you out with that. Registering directly at Summit could become a disaster—on the first day you may spend an hour or more in the line.

* Use the “Fast Track” application for choosing and paying for your meal and just pick up your order in a specified place. 

* Come earlier or later than 10-10:30 AM or lose your priceless time waiting in line at the entrance.

## Conclusion

Web Summit is not a regular IT conference. It’s a huge celebration. It’s a time of gathering for the IT world. Everything is possible here. It’s an awesome opportunity to open your mind, find out how different countries and cultures have their own individual ideas, approaches and views. It’s a good opportunity to invest or find investments, a perfect way to build up your international network. 

Keep in mind that this time can be spent efficiently only in synergy with good preparation and sufficient experience. If you are counting on this event as an instrument for business development, don’t choose it as your first conference—train on smaller ones. Literally, train,  because all the other events seem to be just training once you get to Web Summit.