I’ve been reading year-in-review posts from founders I’ve followed for years. The honest ones, the ones that show struggles alongside wins, not just “I was always right“, made building a business feel less isolated.
This is my first year-in-review. I’m writing it for reflection (things move fast), for future me, and for someone out there who may find it helpful in ways my virtual mentors’ posts have been for me.
2025 by the numbers: I turned 40, the company turned 11, 10 Amelia releases, 9 wpDataTables releases, 8 major Trafft SaaS updates, 6 Ivy Forms releases, 1 company rebrand, 2 foundational hires, crossing 50+ employees, crossing 170,000+ businesses using our software, 5 public speaking engagements, ~200 LinkedIn posts, 10 EMBA modules finished with 2x dean’s list, 160 workouts, 80 piano practice sessions, 4,700km of walk&run movement.
It’s nice to see the snapshot of numbers, as you rarely stop to look back. Yet, if I needed to label this year, I’d call it “foundational” – as I wasn’t focusing on any specific breakthroughs, but on creating structure and foundations for the strategy I have in mind for 2026-2030+.
The year started with a decision from late 2024: TMS (our company name for 10 years) needed a rebrand, but actually not just a logo and name update, but a conceptual transformation that would reflect where we were heading.
January-March: Naming the Future
January was ideation. You can’t just follow instructions to create a brand – but, after naming multiple products, I’ve developed a loose process: start with associations, symbols, and wishes for what the company should embody. Make long lists (hundreds of items). Narrow them down. Add details to each shortlisted idea, then let it sit and “cool down” – new ideas often seem brilliant just because they’re new.
February brought my LinkedIn self-challenge. I committed to posting every weekday for at least a year. With some beginner’s luck I hit my first viral post: 500,000 views – in three weeks in this challenge. My main learning was: going viral actually sucks.
Posting daily sharpens your thinking, improves your writing, and forces you to articulate ideas clearly – so I can warmly recommend it. The challenge is still going – I’ve decided to keep it up beyond the first year.
February was also when we kicked off the search for our Operations Manager and Financial Specialist – two foundational roles for what we’re building.
I turned 40 in February. It happened during my EMBA classes – and my cohort surprised me by organizing a celebration and a night out. Thank you guys!
Same month, we celebrated 12 years of wpDataTables, the WordPress Table plugin that actually launched TMS back then. And I actually do remember first publishing its 1.0 version right after my 28th birthday, developing it mostly during night hours after work, doing a self-birthday gift by releasing.
In March, the new umbrella brand took shape: Melograno Venture Studio. Venture Studio for our concept (growing our product portfolio). Melograno – Italian for pomegranate – as our symbol. The pomegranate exists to give birth to seeds, which captures quote well what we’re building. It’s explained on our new website, so I won’t go deep into details here.
I tested it with our strategic board at a two-day offsite we had in march, and I was happy to receive positive feedback and see that the team is aligned.
We spent those two days planning 2025’s major focus: foundational structural work that would let us add more products without diluting processes, focus, quality, or customer care.
April-May: High-intensity phase
April brought my parents to Belgrade. We see each other once a year now at best – distance makes that complicated. We took the whole family on a short trip – three generations traveling together – these moments matter more than any business milestone.
I dedicated significant time in April to interviews for Financial Specialist and Operations Manager. These roles touch the foundation of our future structure, so I stayed deeply involved, unlike most of the hires.
The talent pool in Serbia is quite impressive – having to choose between multiple strong candidates is the kind of problem you want to have as an employer.
May was probably the most intense month of the year for me.
I had back-to-back:
- The Finances EMBA course with prof. Dr. Mufeed Rawashdeh (probably the most insightful but complex)
- Organizing Dubai’s WordPress meetup
(By the way, if you’re in Dubai or visit it, join us, we’re running recurring meetups!)
- Seamles Digital Commerce Middle East 25000-attendees-conference, where we had a booth
At Seamless, I was the first speaker at the eCommerce University stage, talking about conversion optimization for service-based websites:
The event was 10x the size of a flagship WordCamp – and a very different world for us. We’re attending again this year.
- May ended with another intense EMBA module – business challenge – where we acted as consultants for a female healthcare company. Intense, sometimes frustrating, ultimately transformative.
Being a student in your 40s is sharp for the brain but brutal for energy management. The hard part isn’t the condensed courses or lost weekends – it’s the environment switching. CEO one day, graded student the next, then back to CEO. The cognitive gear-shifting is more exhausting than the actual learning.
June-August: Summer Blooming
Early June brings fireflies to Belgrade – and it’s our family tradition to go look at them in the evenings.
They appear for just a few days each year, and there’s usually one magical evening when they’re most active, adding their “starry night” glow to the local park after sunset. We’ve done this since my daughter Amelia was 3: go looking every evening until we catch that perfect night.
You actually never know which evening is going to be the one (always expect tomorrow to be even better, but then ot one point it starts fading). A nice metaphor for life.
Also, June brought me to UK for the first time in my life – I flew to London for EMBA electives: Entrepreneurial Marketing and Psychology of Pricing – the second was actually eye-opening.
When I came back, it was WPAmelia‘s 7th birthday (the plugin, named after my daughter). Another tradition: every year for WPAmelia’s birthday, I record myself playing the song from Amélie to Amelia.
June also brought Melograno yearly retreat to Arandjelovac – a nice spa hotel, days in swimming pools, team quest, loud night out in the local pub – all components for a great team retreat.
July was when we wrapped up the search for Operations Manager and Financial Specialist. Took longer than planned, but I was determined to get it right.
As their onboarding approached, I wrote “Melograno Operating System 1.0“, fundamental principles for how we’d operate as a company going forward, and I led two internal workshops for our leadership team to make sure we were all aligned.
In July, we’ve launched IvyForms, our new form builder – another addition to the ecosystem of Amelia and wpDataTables plugins.
August is when I prioritize family time – it’s one of two periods during the year when most of the world slows down, and I can allow myself to do the same.
After intense months of EMBA and company transformation, we spent time together recharging before fall’s new wave of intensity. These periods aren’t optional – they’re actually what make constantly pushing through possible.
Between travel, EMBA coursework, and company transformation, maintaining any kind of personal rhythm required a lot of willpower, not motivation.
Workouts at 11 pm after full days – not allowing myself to skip. Piano practice squeezed in where it fit, not to lose this segment of my life – even if it’s 15 minutes sometimes. Running before dawn, when that was the only time available. And, of course, family time is a non-negotiable booked block in the calendar.
160 workouts, 80 piano practice sessions, 4,700km of movement – I keep a log of those things not only as achievements to celebrate, but as proof to myself that systematic consistency works even when you don’t feel like it.
Discipline isn’t the goal or ‘obsession’ – it’s the infrastructure that keeps everything else from collapsing – past 35-40, I’ve learned it’s vital for maintaining energy (body and mind start degrading immediately when you allow it to happen).
September-December: Launching the Future
September started warm with WordCamp Vršac – small Serbian cities have this hospitality you can’t replicate.
Great speakers, great conversations – very touching to see all the initiatives the local community runs. We were happy to support the event by volunteering, micro-sponsoring, and actually learned a lot during the event.
September was also when we crossed 50 employees. Headcount was never the goal – as an owner, you’d actually be prouder keeping the team lean than growing it large (especially in the current AI era). But building the foundation for 2026-2030 requires strategic growth.
At EMBA, I had the opportunity to study from Prof. Mark Esposito – Harvard professor, World Economic Forum member, OpenAI contributor, Micro1 cofounder (and more) – as it’s a rare opportunity, I absorbed everything I could.
We started onboarding Miloš (Operations Manager) and Marijana (Financial Specialist) in September. Almost a year after I decided we needed these roles – but doing it right was worth the delay. For foundational hires, thorough beats rushed.
October brought the Alpha launch of Amelia 9.0 – the biggest backend revamp since 1.0.
And the company 11th birthday, which I used to officially rebrand to Melograno and launch the new website.
Mid-month was GITEX at Dubai. It’s so large – scary large (200K attendees, like a city inside a city, blocking the whole downtown Dubai during the conference days). I explored as much as was possible and made sure to learn everything I could, took interviews at different booths: How are enterprises building websites? Do people at the largest tech event know WordPress?
After GITEX, I helped organize the WordPress section at Domain Days Dubai and spoke alongside M Asif Rahman, Miriam Schwab and Robert Jacobi.
November kicked off with a strategic workshop reviewing progress since last November (a lot). I gave the stage to Miloš, our new Operations Manager, to introduce the structure we’d developed for scaling. After dozens of questions from the team (happy they are so engaged in the process!), we aligned well.
The team successfully launched the first Pro version of Ivy Forms, and I’m happy to see it’s already being accepted warmly by users.
And of course, last weeks of November meant Black Friday. Our team made sure it went flawlessly across all products.
In December, as part of our yearly charity initiative, we became patrons of a local home for unsheltered mothers. Isidora, our Head of Product, helped us find them. As a first step, we funded some basic anti-fire equipment they needed to get official permits but couldn’t afford, and committed to continuing to support them throughout 2026.
Beyond donating to funds (that we did every year), we want to offer direct help where it matters.
The atmosphere inside is warm and positive – babies being born is always a moment of hope, and the team running it is passionate and fully committed. Plan to visit them more and share their stories in more detail in our media.
Amelia 9.0 went to production in the last week of the year, leaving a good feeling of achievement for the team.
And to wrap things up, I prepared branded gift packages for all “Melogranians”. Choosing components and guiding the design was genuinely fun.
Product updates
I didn’t want to go too deep into details of what happened with every product this year – but you can read the respective updates:
Conclusion
This wasn’t a year of explosive growth or dramatic pivots. Yet, it was a year of building what needs to exist before those things can happen sustainably.
We hired for structure, not firefighting. We rebranded to reflect where we’re going; we’ve launched products that complement our ecosystem. We built processes that will let us scale without breaking.
2026 is when we start building on what we built.
The years that stretch you are usually the ones that compound positively. 2025 stretched me. The invisible work, pushing yourself, the difficult decisions, the foundations nobody sees – that’s what will make 2026 and beyond possible.
On to 2026 (which is actually 2 months in already)!