Bubble turned 14 this year, and we wanted the celebration to feel less like an anniversary and more like an adventure we're all on together. Fourteen years is a lot: People who've been here since the early days, people who joined last month, and everyone in between. We wanted a celebration that could hold all of that, and get the whole company looking forward together at what we're building next.
So when Kristin, a few weeks into her time on the People team, got asked what we should do for the birthday, she floated an idea: What if we built a digital passport experience? Most of us on the People Team joined within the past year, so we were figuring it out as we went. Someone said, "Let's build it on Bubble." Someone else said, "What if we made it a whole Spirit Week?"
And that's how Destination Bubble 2.0 was born.
What we built
At the center of the week was the Bubble Passport, an app built on Bubble by our own Victoria on the People team, with a little help from PJ, our GTM developer. It was choose-your-own-adventure: complete a handful of experiences, collect a stamp for each one, and earn entries toward our Ultimate Adventure Prize, plus daily surprise giveaways to keep things fun and a little competitive.
It's a small thing to say out loud, but it mattered to us. Victoria isn't an engineer, and with a little help from PJ, she still built a working product on Bubble to celebrate the company. That's kind of the whole point of what we do here: Bubble exists so anyone with an idea can build something real, no coding background required. Watching one of our own do exactly that, for our own birthday, felt like proof our mission works from the inside out.
The week itself
We kicked things off at Team Demos with a passport launch and a round of cake in the office. At the same time, travel kits full of snacks, stickers, merch, and a note from our co-founders made their way to remote Bubblers' mailboxes, so the moment wasn't just an HQ thing.
From there, each day unlocked something new:
- Monday: Happy Memories. People shared what year they joined and their favorite memory since, alongside an "AI Native" prompt for sharing productivity tips.
- Tuesday: Appreciation. Values Award nominations rolled in all day.
- Wednesday: Bubble Trivia. A live leaderboard, hosted in Slack by Party Nestor, our resident AI butler and self-appointed "captain of celebrations," narrating the week like a flight crew announcing gate changes.
- Thursday: Bubble Fashionista Day. Everyone in blue or Bubble merch, capped off with an All Hands and a champagne toast led by Zoe, one of our Engineering Managers who started at Bubble as an intern seven years ago.
- Friday: Team Photos. Wherever people were working, whenever they could gather.
The part worth slowing down for
The "Happy Memories" prompt was simple: What year did you join, and what's your favorite memory since? It turned into 78 replies in one Slack thread, people telling stories on top of each other.
I'll admit my own memory is near the top of that list. Three months into the job, on my first offsite, we kicked things off with the whole team playing one massive game of rock, paper, scissors, cheering on the last two people standing. I remember thinking,, positively overwhelmed with the energy, "I'm exactly where I need to be."
Sam remembered meeting the whole team in person for the first time on a retreat to Miami, six weeks after joining remotely, and called it "still my favorite part of being a remote employee at Bubble." Anusha, a month in, wrote that all the "welcome" messages from across the company made a new job feel less overwhelming and more like she belonged from day one. And Josh, one of our co-founders, jumped in with throwback photos from 2012.
Fourteen years of tenure, sitting in one thread together. That was the whole idea: give the people who've been here since the beginning and the people who just showed up last month the same invitation to tell their story, in the same place, at the same time.
Why it mattered
We wanted Spirit Week to be fun, and it was. But we also wanted it to feel meaningful. One shared experience across teams, remote or in the office, that honored 14 years of work and got everyone a little more excited about where we're headed next. Everyone got to choose their own adventure, but we were all on the same journey.
Getting to build and run this with the rest of the People team has been one of my favorite projects since joining Bubble. Grateful for this team, and grateful to everyone who showed up for it.
Happy 14th birthday, Bubble. Here's to the next one!
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