10 Years of Mimiquate: What We’ve Learned and What Comes Next

When Mimiquate was founded in 2016, the intention was to build a company where technology and people mattered equally. A place where lasting relationships could be created, modern technologies could be explored, and people could do meaningful work while continuing to grow professionally.Ten years later, the company has changed in many ways. The projects have become more ambitious, the team has grown, and Mimiquate’s involvement in the broader software community has expanded.

But the principles behind the way the company works have remained remarkably consistent.

Starting From an Idea

Mimiquate was founded in 2016 with the idea of creating a software company with its own identity.

At the time, Uruguay’s technology ecosystem was expanding rapidly, and starting a company felt both challenging and exciting. The founders wanted to explore technologies they believed in, work on interesting products, and create a place where people could develop their careers without sacrificing a healthy and human way of working.

Elixir became an important part of that identity from the beginning.

At the time, we were researching Elixir, and it felt exciting to start from there. It was not widely adopted, but we could see enormous potential in the language and its ecosystem. — Marcelo Dominguez, Mimiquate.

The founders were also thinking carefully about the kind of relationship Mimiquate should have with its customers.

The goal was never simply to receive requirements, complete tasks, and move on. Mimiquate wanted to become genuinely involved in the products and companies it worked with: to understand how its customers thought, act as part of their teams, and make decisions based on what would be best for them in the long term.

From the beginning, we believed that our customers’ success had to be our success. That meant putting our energy into understanding their goals and acting in their best interest, rather than thinking only about the immediate work in front of us. — Juan Azambuja, Mimiquate.

Growing Through Trust

Over the last decade, the projects have evolved, the team has grown, and the scale of the challenges has changed significantly.

What started as a small software development team became a company working on complex international products and collaborating closely with engineering teams and organizations across different industries. Throughout that growth, Mimiquate’s approach to customer relationships has remained central.

The company aims to work as an extension of each customer’s team. That means understanding the product beyond its technical implementation, contributing ideas, raising concerns, and taking ownership of the results. It also means being honest when the team believes something should be approached differently, even when that conversation is difficult.

Over time, this way of working has created relationships built on mutual trust. Some of Mimiquate’s most important customer relationships have lasted for years, and many new opportunities have come through recommendations from people who already understood how the company worked.

That has been incredibly meaningful to Mimiquate. It confirmed something the founders believed from the beginning: long-term relationships are not created only by delivering good software. They are created by consistently demonstrating genuine care for the same outcomes as the people and companies involved.

We have always wanted people at Mimiquate to think and act as part of the customer’s team. When you genuinely care about their success, the relationship changes. You stop being an external provider and start becoming a trusted partner. — Juan Azambuja.

What Changed Over These 10 Years

A decade is enough time for almost everything around a company to change.

The kinds of products Mimiquate builds have evolved. Its technical knowledge has deepened. The team has become more experienced, and the company has learned how to support larger and more demanding projects. Mimiquate also understands its own culture better than it did in the beginning.

Some of the principles that were initially informal eventually became explicit values within the company: responsibility, transparency, flexibility, companionship, and joy.

Giving people ownership over their work has always been an important part of that culture.

One thing I always wanted to encourage at Mimiquate was giving people ownership, while also allowing them the freedom to contribute ideas from their own perspective. The best results usually happen when people understand the goal and feel trusted to help decide how to reach it. —Juan Azambuja.

Many things have changed, but the collaborative mindset, the search for continuous improvement, and the willingness to adapt to each challenge remain part of Mimiquate’s identity today.

Becoming More Involved in the Community

Contributing to the software community was something Mimiquate’s founders wanted the company to do from its early years.

The ambition was to work on open source projects, write technical content, share what the team was learning, and participate in conferences. In practice, however, making that happen was difficult at first.

During the company’s early years, working with customers required almost all of its time and attention. The priority had to be building a sustainable company, supporting the team, and delivering the kind of work that would allow its customer relationships to grow.

As Mimiquate became more established, it gradually gained the capacity to contribute more consistently.

Its involvement began through the broader Elixir community. Since 2016, Mimiquate has supported conferences and events connected to the ecosystem, both because the company believed in the technology and because it wanted to help the community around it continue growing.

Over the years, Mimiquate has sponsored many conferences, from smaller community events to major international gatherings. That support started during the company’s early years and continues today.

More recently, the company’s participation has expanded beyond sponsorship. Members of the team have written articles, built and maintained open source projects, and presented their work at international conferences such as ElixirConf.

These activities are no longer something Mimiquate wants to pursue only occasionally. The company wants them to become part of its DNA. Working on open source, writing, researching, and giving presentations allows Mimiquate to contribute to the ecosystem, but it also helps the team become better at its work. These activities encourage people to study ideas more deeply, explain them clearly, receive feedback, and develop skills that can be difficult to acquire through customer projects alone.

Technology communities grow when people share what they know. Contributing is valuable for the community, but it is also an important way for people to challenge themselves and continue developing professionally. — Marcelo Dominguez.

Bringing Communities Together in Montevideo

Two years ago, Mimiquate began organizing the Montevideo Elixir Meetup. Its goal is to help more people in Uruguay discover Elixir, create a regular space for those already working with the language, and strengthen the connections between the local and international Elixir communities.

The meetup gives people an opportunity to share projects, explore ideas, and meet others interested in the ecosystem. It also gives members of Mimiquate’s team a place to develop their presentation skills and share what they have been learning.

At the same time, Mimiquate wants its office to be useful to the broader local software community.

The company has started offering the space to other technology groups, including JavaScript, Python, and Ruby meetups. Different communities have their own tools and perspectives, but they often face similar challenges and have a great deal to learn from one another.

By opening its doors, Mimiquate hopes to make it easier for these groups to organize activities, exchange knowledge, and create stronger connections within Montevideo’s technology ecosystem.

Mimiquate also supports initiatives such as Open Web Uruguay, where people from different technology communities come together around a shared interest in building and sustaining an open web.

A Company Built as a Team

Mimiquate has always been a collective project.

The company aims to create an environment where people can grow professionally, participate in decisions, and become an active part of what is being built together. One of Mimiquate’s long-term intentions has been to support team members in developing their own careers and interests.

That can happen through customer work, but also through talks, mentoring, research, open source projects, technical writing, events, and independent experimentation. Mimiquate believes the company becomes stronger when people are encouraged to explore their interests, share what they learn, and take on challenges outside their usual responsibilities.

Importantly, this participation must also come from the company’s leadership.

It would be difficult to encourage the team to write, present, contribute to open source, or organize events without the company’s leaders being willing to do those things themselves.

I think it is important that people feel they can explore their own interests and ideas. A company grows when the people inside it are given opportunities to grow. — Marcelo Dominguez.

Reaching 10 years means realizing that culture is something you build every day. It is reflected in small decisions, in how people collaborate, and in the trust that develops over time.— Juan Azambuja.

Looking Forward

The company wants to keep building software with customers whose products and goals it believes in. It wants to deepen its existing relationships and continue earning the trust that has made so much of its growth possible.

Mimiquate also wants to strengthen its contribution to the Elixir ecosystem and the broader software community.

That means continuing to sponsor events, organize meetups, maintain open source projects, publish technical content and share the team’s work at conferences. More importantly, it means creating the conditions for people throughout the company to take part in those activities.

Growth remains important, but it is not the only measure of progress.

Mimiquate wants to continue building a company where customers feel that the team is genuinely invested in their success, where people can take ownership and develop their careers, and where sharing knowledge is treated as a meaningful part of the work.

Ten years in, those ideas continue to guide what comes next.