As we approach the end of December and the close of another exciting year, I find myself reflecting on everything we’ve been through, our achievements, failures, and everything that brought us here.

If I had to choose a word for this year, it would be “adaptability”.

Looking back on 2024

This year has been a masterclass in how different every company’s operations really are. When we were building Echo, we thought pharmacy operations were uniquely complex - turns out we were both right and wrong. Right that pharmacy ops are complex, but wrong to think that that’s unique.

Meeting amazing teams

We’ve spent countless hours with teams across the world this year, from solar installers managing complex contractor networks, to clean battery manufacturers coordinating R&D partnerships, to last-mile delivery companies optimising driver schedules. Each conversation revealed the same pattern: scrappy teams making magic happen with a patchwork of tools, but hitting a ceiling as they scale.

One conversation that really stuck with me was with a Head of Ops who described spending their days “jumping between eight different systems just to answer basic questions about order status.” Another told me how their team has built incredible automation in Excel, only to watch it creak under the weight of their growth. These are exactly the kinds of problems we faced at Echo - and exactly why we built Keel.

Understanding the value of Keel

What’s been particularly rewarding is seeing how teams use Keel in ways we never imagined. Most striking has been to understand how Keel is a platform that helps companies solve their most critical ops problems. Rather than just being software for simple or narrow issues, Keel’s highest value seems to come at the inflection point when companies realise they’re outgrowing their existing tools, and it seems like there’s no choice but to self-build.

And perhaps the most validating moments have been when technical operators - the unsung heroes who usually make things work through sheer force of will and Excel wizardry - tell us they finally feel empowered to build what their teams actually need. That’s exactly what we hoped for when we started this journey.

Supercharging our product

We were proud to announce our seed funding and share what that unlocked for us, including enabling us to continue developing our platform for building operations systems, as well as bringing the product to new audiences. We’re so thankful to our investors, including Earlybird and LocalGlobe who have both been such a great support throughout this journey.

Part of that product development has been releasing features that we were so excited to bring to existing and new customers. Three of our favourites were:

• Auth - Keel supports integration with 3rd-party authentication providers, including Google, Facebook, GitLab, and more. Our Single Sign-On authentication flow provides an abstraction over all the complex OAuth gymnastics you’d normally need to build. Security is very important to us and so we also adhere to the OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect standards.

• Local Console - previously, you needed to deploy your code to access Console features. Now you can develop, debug, and explore your application locally with the same powerful tooling you get in production.

• Multi-region support - we recently added the ability to host different Keel projects in different regions. We currently offer several regions including London, Frankfurt and Singapore, with more to be added soon. This especially helps our customers with sensitive data who need local hosting for compliance reasons.

Looking ahead to 2025

As we approach 2025, one thing is clear: the way companies operate is changing faster than ever. The businesses we speak to aren’t just looking for better tools - they’re fundamentally rethinking how they build their operational foundations.

This coming year, we’re doubling down on our core belief that the best ops tools are built by the people who use them every day. We’ll be expanding our platform to make it even easier for technical operators to create exactly what their teams need. Think deeper integrations with the tools you already use, more powerful automation capabilities, and new ways to visualise and act on your operational data.

But beyond the product roadmap, what really excited me is the community that’s forming around Keel. Every week, we see teams sharing with us new ways they’ve solved complex operational challenges. We plan to amplify this knowledge-sharing so that operators across different industries can benefit from the hive-mind of ops brains.

We’re also seeing a shift in how growing companies think about their tech stacks. Instead of accepting the limitations of narrow SaaS tools, they’re asking “what if we could build exactly what we need?”. That’s a huge change, and one we’re committed to supporting.

Wishing you a happy new year

Our mission hasn’t changed - we want every growing company to have the operational superpowers that helped us scale Echo. But our understanding of what that means keeps evolving through our conversations with you. Your challenges, ideas, and feedback will continue to shape Keel’s development in 2025 and beyond.

There’s so much more to come, and we couldn’t be more excited to build it together with you.

Thank you to you, our community, all our customers, and our small-but-mighty Keel team for your support, interest, and contributions this year. I hope you're all enjoying a very happy holiday, however you celebrate, and look forward to seeing you again in the new year.