With Asteroid’s fourth year well underway, now is a great time to reflect on how 2024 unfolded

In many ways, 2024 was a successful year for Asteroid – financially, it was the strongest year in our history. Despite the still-challenging market, the year brought important milestones, significant growth, new customers, fantastic new colleagues – and proud new owners of our company.

Asteroid’s journey toward new heights is progressing as planned, but it’s good to occasionally take a moment and reflect on how far we’ve come. What better time than now, with the new year already in full swing and our financial statements nearly ready?

Looking back on the past year, we’re grateful for all we’ve achieved – and it’s inspiring to see how much we grew and improved the company together. Here’s a quick recap of what 2024 looked like for us, our partners, and our customers from many meaningful perspectives:

📈 Financially, the year was excellent. Our revenue grew by approximately 21%, from 3.15 million euros in 2023 to 3.83 million euros in 2024, with solid profitability and near-zero bench time across customer projects.

🤝 Strong customer relationships remained a key part of our year. Most of our client engagements have lasted several years, and 2024 was no exception. We had the privilege to continue nearly all our projects throughout the year, delivering digital service development and strategic advisory across sectors such as energy, finance, gaming, logistics, manufacturing, real estate, and retail.

🚀 We welcomed five talented new colleagues. Today, Asteroid is home to 28 seasoned software development professionals. We are proud to continue employing every expert who joined us to redefine what great software consulting looks like. One of the biggest milestones of the year was our first-ever share issue, which made Asteroid predominantly employee-owned – with all experts sharing ownership equally.

💙 We invested heavily in employee well-being and learning. From monthly meetings to our summer and Christmas parties, we made time to gather and have a good time. Most of our team participated in the Focus Tiger program, which offers science-backed tools to enhance modern knowledge work. Another highlight was our Green ICT training, helping us stay up to date on sustainability in tech. Our continuous learning efforts also covered areas like cybersecurity, AI, and cloud platforms. We were honored to be recognized on Talented’s Top 50 tech employers in 2024 list!

🌟 We started new partnerships in HR, sales, finance, and communications. After the summer, we underwent an occupational safety inspection and received excellent feedback from the authorities – with the inspector remarking, “It really seems like you’re passionate about occupational safety!” And they’re absolutely right – we invest heavily in our people and maintaining great governance.

🙌 Our partner ecosystem grew, with Heroe and Lakeview joining our network, which now consists of eight companies. Together with Luoto Company, Kipinä, NorthCode, Trail Openers, and Vuolu, we offer our customers a wide range of complementary services, delivered by about 250 experts. Thanks to our partners for the great collaboration!

The best year in Asteroid’s history

At Asteroid, we are incredibly grateful for the past year. 2024 brought significant progress in developing our business – and at the same time, we achieved the best financial result to date.

We succeeded in well-balanced growth and high-quality sales while sharpening our service offering to meet customer needs even better. This allowed us to apply our deep expertise across various industries in the best possible way. Our new projects included complex digital development initiatives in the energy, manufacturing, and real estate sectors – many featured on our blog.

Our recipe of seasoned professionals, fair and transparent culture, adaptability, and satisfied customers, has once again proven to work well.

Asteroid’s Summer Party, 2024

What’s next for the IT Industry?

What does the future hold for the industry in uncertain times? In Finland, we’ve been waiting for a market rebound for quite some time, but with one crisis after another, predicting the future isn’t getting any easier. Still, economic cycles and recessions are part of the game, each with their twists.

For IT service development, 2024 was challenging for many. With reduced investments from both corporate and public sector clients, competition for projects was intense. Understandably so, but in some cases, the pressure to lower prices raised valid concerns about maintaining quality outcomes and sustainable partnerships. Good work rarely comes cheap, yet many projects were fought over at almost any cost.

Despite market challenges, Asteroid achieved strong financial results while maintaining an excellent price-to-quality ratio.

Across the industry, there are high hopes for a market recovery, but returning to the talent war of a few years ago seems unlikely. Instead, customers now expect consultants to have broader skill sets, and at the same time, many companies have developed more self-sufficient digital development capabilities.

We see this as a healthy trend since vendor lock-ins aren’t sustainable. In the end, it’s about finding the right balance between internal and external expertise, influenced by economic cycles and sales success across all sectors.

AI is also driving competition by making certain tasks more efficient and unlocking new possibilities. This is exciting but also raises challenges, like data protection and security concerns. At the same time, individual expertise and code quality are becoming even more important as AI tools become part of daily work.

Fortunately, there are positive signs too. IT recruitment is picking up, and recruitment campaigns and summer job programs in Helsinki are running once again. Great to see new opportunities opening for junior developers too! As a University of Helsinki graduate who’s seen the industry from many angles, I still highly recommend IT as a future-proof career well worth pursuing.

Looking ahead – growing responsibly and strengthening our expertise

At Asteroid, we’ll stay on the path that has served us well. We’ll continue hiring seasoned professionals and supporting our customers’ success in digital business development. Our focus remains on custom software development and technical advisory for complex projects.

We’re also investing heavily in professional development, supported by a solid training budget that helps every Asteroidian to deepen their skills and stay up to date. We’ve identified key future trends, earned certifications, and built learning paths – especially in cloud technologies and AI – to ensure we keep delivering top-tier expertise to our customers.

As for growth, we’re excited about the future – but not in a hurry. We want to enjoy the journey and build a technology partner we can be proud of – while also offering every Asteroidian meaningful work and an exceptional workplace.

This year, we’ll support an even wider range of customers, and I’m confident that a year from now, we’ll be looking back with a smile once again.

Finally, I’d like to thank our customers and partners for the excellent collaboration and trust you’ve placed in us. Let’s make 2025 a fantastic year – together!