A strategic partnership delivering flexibility and profitable growth

Case Study: Damilah | Valve Space

Here’s how our partner-shoring model has enabled us to create outstanding business value for a growing UK start-up.

Valve Space is a rapidly growing UK-based start-up. It provides sales and marketing software to the flexible workspace market that enables their customers to unlock lead flow, build brand awareness, connect to clients, service occupiers and grow revenues.

As an ambitious business in a fast-moving market, Valve Space needed to expand engineering capacity quickly and flexibly to meet evolving product and customer demands. To support this, Valve Space opted to partner with a trusted nearshore team to accelerate delivery, complement in-house expertise and maintain momentum.

We were proud to be selected as that partner. Valve Space recognised our ability to attract and retain high-quality talent in North Macedonia, while valuing our strong cultural alignment and ability to work seamlessly as part of their team.

Our ‘partner-shoring’ approach to working with clients – a near-shoring model where the client and supplier work seamlessly and flexibly together towards common goals – aligned closely with Valve Space’s need for a scalable and collaborative delivery model and was a key factor in the company’s decision.ess working relationship across borders.

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Delivering technical depth and collaborative support

Since January 2024, we’ve been working closely with Valve Space to provide additional engineering capacity as part of their software engineering function.

We have supplied a team of skilled professionals, including:

• Software developers
• Quality assurance (QA) testers
• Automation QA specialists

These experts supplement Valve Space’s in-house team by carrying out product development and testing, supporting on complex projects for Valve Space’s product-led growth initiatives.

This has included:

• Developing and implementing a new performance testing suite to ensure system reliability and scalability
• Enhancing customer-focused features that add value and contribute to platform revenue

Beyond pure technical expertise, we also supply additional support to enhance Valve Space’s team structure and workflow. This includes, as required:

• Fractional scrum master support on a few key projects
• Flexible team organisation, allowing Valve Space to scale capacity based on workload and project complexity
• Collaborative working environments, fostering a close partnership between Valve Space’s in-house team and our own people

One of the key highlights of the partnership so far has been a company-wide event we hosted at our headquarters in Skopje at the start of 2025. Here, the entire product and engineering teams from both companies assembled to work together and, after hours, enjoy a night of music and fun.

We are always keen proponents of this kind of gathering, to ensure distributed groups of colleagues meet face to face and can bond in person – and there is no doubt it boosted team morale, while fostering ever closer alignment and integration.

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Generating added value through close collaboration

Thanks to our collaborative approach and technical expertise, the partnership between our two companies has yielded significant value for Valve Space, particularly when it comes to rapid product development, flexibility and efficiency – allowing Valve Space to sharpen its focus on delivering high-quality products to meet its customers’ needs to drive growth.

Above all, for a start-up company like Valve Space, the ability to rapidly align talent to priority initiatives is key. To date, we’ve contributed by:

• Rapidly onboarding skilled professionals to meet immediate product needs, while taking care to find individuals who align well with Valve Space’s team and culture
• Managing resources, allowing Valve Space to focus on growth rather than hiring and HR administration
• Embedding people who are able to quickly get up to speed on Valve Space’s market and customer needs through close collaboration with product managers and cross-functional teams

At the same time, Valve Space benefits from strong organisational support, such as:

• Senior leadership support that helps to ensure complex projects receive the expertise they require; whenever a significant challenge has occurred, we have been ready and willing to lean into it, with a hands-on approach from our most experienced people – including CEO Iain Bishop and CTO Aleksandar Karavasilev – as required
• Proactive problem-solving, where we always listen carefully, in order to fully understand and address challenges swiftly and effectively
• Delivery manager support to help accelerate key workstreams and keep momentum strong

Additionally, as Lucinda Faucher, Valve Space’s VP of Product Management, explains:

“A successful partnership of this kind is always built on trust, and Damilah have proven to be reliable and collaborative partners for Valve Space.”

Lucinda is pleased that the current relationship between the two companies has been highly effective so far. As Valve Space continues to grow and maximise profits, we’re proud to be seen as a long-term partner in helping them deliver on their ambitions.

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A reliable and aligned partnership

The partnership between Valve Space and Damilah exemplifies the benefits of working with a skilled, flexible, and trustworthy ‘partner-shoring’ provider. Our depth of expertise, proactive approach, and commitment to building a collaborative team culture – one that feels like a seamless extension of Valve Space’s own team – has made this a highly effective and rewarding collaboration.

As Lucinda puts it:

“Damilah fosters a positive culture that really cares about its people. Most importantly, they enjoy what they do and bring great energy to the team. They’re collaborative, knowledgeable, and have taken the time to understand our vision, which helps ensure they are aligned with where we are headed and how best to support us along the way.”

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