2025 Recap
👀 In 2024, Surf Office had a fantastic year, and I expected a repeat with less of my involvement so I could experiment with new projects.
🚢 That’s how 2025 started. We shipped Pingotel (a simple SaaS for small hotels) and a couple of smaller tools.
📊 But the market changed a lot last year, and it looked like the business might even decline. That was a red alert and made me jump back all in with Surf Office. It wasn’t an easy year, but we ended up with 20% revenue growth.
✨ There is a clear shift in marketing from educational content to more authentic, fun content. We are going to double down on that in 2026 – IRL meetups and who knows, I might even start vlogging.
🇺🇸 We invested heavily in hosting company retreats in the US in recent years, and this business nearly disappeared for us in 2025. For almost all of our US clients, we now organize retreats in Central America, Europe, or Asia.
👋 For someone working most of the time remotely, alone in my office corner, the highlights of the year were IRL meetups with all these amazing colleagues and collaborators.
🏨 Buy That Hotel grew a lot last year, and it is a project with the biggest potential. We now have qualified hotel buyers planning to deploy over 1 billion € in the next 12 months. Our focus in 2026 is on getting more off-market deals.
🚐 I combined work with slow travel, experiencing New Zealand, Italy, and Slovakia while working remotely. I’m very happy with this lifestyle – it helps to recharge batteries and keep balance.
The plans for 2026 are ambitious, but this year I’m definitely starting with a more grounded mindset and building on the foundation we already have, rather than crazy experimentation.