CEO Reflections: Egnyte's Holiday Party - The Marker of Our Growth

Today is our company holiday party. I would have called it our Christmas party, but I learned after coming to the US that we have to be politically correct and sensitive to all other denominations. Therefore, I use the generic term of a "holiday party." This comes from a guy who grew up as a non-Christian in India, yet celebrated Christmas with family every year. To this day, I still carry the fondest memories of my dad buying Christmas crackers, so much so that every year I continue to buy Christmas crackers from Cost Plus, Target, or wherever I can find them. Anyways, not to be sidetracked with my own musings, the reason for me writing today is looking back over the past 4 years and seeing how Egnyte has grown.The very first year, there were only four founders and the holiday party was a grand affair. I took all eight of us (spouses/partners included) to Manresa, one of my favorite restaurants on the Peninsula, and spent close to two thousand dollars (my personal money - not on the company account). The second year we had approximately 15 people (after the seed round) and had a nice dinner at PF Chang's. Last year we were larger, almost double that size, and we had dinner at a nearby restaurant.This year we have reserved two rooms at a nearby restaurant for our holiday party. Egnyte has grown, indeed cautiously, and with the support of our customers we are now a much larger company. We don't offer free massages or house cleaning to our employees, but I personally ensure that each person on our team feels highly valued. My goal is to enrich each individual associated with Egnyte, but first and foremost to build a great product and have a huge number of happy customers. As I tell my wife, I have two children - my 2 year old and Egnyte. This is how much Egnyte means to me.Next year, I want to be in a position to take the entire Egnyte family (employees, partners, customers who can attend) to Manresa or The French Laundry, assuming they can hold that many people and I can get a reservation.