“Make your art into companies”
Joe Hollier, co-founder & co-creator of the Light Phone, talks about their culture, how art still feeds back into his work as a founder and priorities.
Ah, I’ve heard so much about the Light Phone through the grapevine. Such a pleasure to meet you Joe! Could you tell me a bit more about the beginning of this venture?
Sure. So my background is in graphic design and I’ve done a lot of skating videos and ran my own skateboard company during high school and college. I wasn’t making much, it was more a labor of love kind of thing. After college I freelanced for a bit but felt that it wasn’t really satisfying me. I made pictures and my friends and people that I was like-minded with liked it. But it wasn’t really resonating with or changing the world in the ways I wanted it to do.
And that led you to applying to 30 Weeks?
Yeah, I liked the premise of the program — thinking way bigger than you’ve never thought before. I’ve always been a curious person so that drew me in. But the tech world is definitely a new thing for me and during the program I had this moment of “Wow, I hate the tech world” and out of that feeling I had the idea for the Light Phone and just fell in love with it and wanted to make it real. In order to do that I needed a company and other people. So it was kind of organic in that way that it came about.
What the Light Phone means to me now is like it’s a platform to do and say something in a bigger way than I ever have.
I still think of everything I do through this artist lens when it comes to the phone. Yes, it’s a consumer electronics product and there’s a lot of technology that makes it possible. But really I consider it an art piece. It’s asking people about their life, how they spend their time, and making a statement about the current situation. So the company is just a platform for that.
What was your experience like in the program?
I think I’ve had ideas like the Light Phone for a really long time, and I’m sure many people have ideas like that all of the time but they sort of just let them die.. What the program did for me was that it really pushed me to keep exploring that idea. In the context I thought I could do anything, so I didn’t really think like “Oh, that’s gonna be super hard” and let it go.
I was in the mindset that it was all just “pretend”. That meant it was a safe place for me to experiment and throw out a crazy idea of how we’d be able to make a phone. It’s all about proving it’s a good idea without just stopping yourself at that first thought of “Well, how are you gonna do that”, which is the biggest hurdle.
I totally agree. Getting over yourself in that moment is really important. So what did you think about the pace of the program? 30 weeks isn’t that long.
I think it had a nice rhythm to it and kept you moving forward, which is so much easier than if I’m in my bedroom with my cat working on some drawings. It’s really intense and we had these defined deadlines, like when to pitch and stuff, but it was still open enough that it wasn’t prohibitive or constricting. It definitely pushed me, not just when it came to deadlines, but also in being uncomfortable. You know you’re going to pitch this guy on Wednesday and sometimes they didn’t even tell you that an investor was coming in and then you had to do a two minute pitch on the spot. And you know, your heart races a lot but then you think that you survived it all and the next time it gets a bit easier. It was a good learning experience, like a crash course.
So, learning by doing?
Definitely. That gave me the confidence to keep investing time into this idea, and gave us the courage to launch a Kickstarter at the end of the program.
So I know Hyper Island, which is involved in the program, is all about reflection. What did you think about that?
I think it was facilitated very well. Our program director Sveinung Skaalnes made sure that we had those moments to reflect during the program and at the end we had a good three days of reflecting on the entire process. That was incredible powerful because it’s really easy in the startup culture to forget reflecting. Now that enough time has passed since 30 Weeks I think we realized that ourselves forgot about reflecting because there’s just an infinite list to do list that keeps growing. You can just go into that and keep moving forward without stopping, zooming out and reflection. And doing that is really appreciative. Every time I do something reflective, and especially as a group, I feel so lucky to be working with what I do.
Have you thought about company culture before?
That’s not something that’s, in general, never crossed my mind before this. It wasn’t like I wanted to start a company and figure out all of these things. It was more like I had this idea for a phone and then it’s been about filling in all of the other pieces to try to make it possible. Now that it’s not just me and Kaiwei Tang, my co-founder, we have to think about how we keep making sure that everyone’s transparent, that everyone get notified and that we have clear communication all across.
Since you’re a beginner to this, how have you tackled this problem?
We’re lucky to have some great advisors guiding us. I’ve never considered what it would be like to be a “CEO” and I never really thought about company culture as a philosophy that we would have to design and maintain. I’ve never really had a job at a company before, it’s all new. I’ve never once before considered what it’s like to be a CEO and I never even knew company culture was a thing. Plus, I’ve never really had a job at a company before so it’s all very new to me overall.
How have you started to build your culture now?
We’ve set up a good rhythm of meetings. So we talk one hour every week at a set time, I talk to one of the advisors every day for eight minutes at a random time and we have a meeting once a month where the whole team comes together and meet each other face to face. I think touching everyday, even if it’s just to say “Hey, how’s your day going?”, can be really helpful. But a lot of credit goes to our advisor that’s encouraging us to do this kind of people-first company.
Ah, interesting. Could you tell me a bit more about the one hour meeting each week?
We usually do it over the phone, like a conference call, and we have an agenda or at least a couple of topics. We try to limit it to 60 minutes because we’ve learned that it’s extremely easy to go on for hours so we need to keep it very focused for everyone’s sake. And if I start talking with someone about something that isn’t necessarily valuable for the whole team to hear at that point we take it offline and then share our notes with the team. It’s about trying to make the best use of everyone’s time and always learning and keep getting better at it.
And the monthly meetup?
That day is very powerful. We’ve only had it once so far, but everybody is able to align and think about the long-term goals together and at the end of the day we did a little reflection where I almost cried. It was so touching to hear everyone describe how excited they are about the Light Phone and how thankful they are for the group coming together and in general being a part of our team. It was really touching and inspiring.
But in terms of structure we try to set up an agenda ahead of time, around a week before. We do that by circulating ideas and ask our, for a lack of a better term, departments about the biggest thing they’d like to share with the team. Then at the meeting we give everyone around 30–60 minutes, depending on the amount of needs within that department to talk about it. But we start the day off with a big breakfast where it’s more casual and then we catch up starting with a timeline that touches upon everything that needs to get done throughout the day. As we move through the day and discuss things things on the timeline gets moved around. Along with that we try to have a running list of actionable things. So we’re thinking about what needs to get done and who needs own it, along with writing some notes. That list gets circulated at the end of the day.
We’re also trying out this new thing about setting quarterly goals. So each department sets their own goals so we’re not telling them what to do. Then at the end of the month we reflect on that. Why didn’t I get there? Was it because it wasn’t a priority? Is it okay that I didn’t get there? Do I need more resources or is it something we’re lacking? It’s great to have it so you’re able to reflect on those goals.
So it’s a work in progress, the culture thing. And it’s definitely very new to me but it’s fun. I’m not naturally good at managing that side of the business but Kaiwei and I try to be as sincere, nice and empathetic as possible and that seems to be a good starting point so far.
What helps you become better at managing?
I think it’s mostly dictated by needs, what the company needs to have happen and try to think of the best way to facilitate that using our given resources. In terms of systems, we’re changing and evolving. When it comes to communication we all use different tools for that. Some of our engineers are in China so we use WeChat to talk with them. I use the phone a lot to talk to our advisors. We have Slack for the software team. So right now it’s very divided, each department has its own little system. But it’s very much a work in progress and based on trial and error.
And how do you see or determine those needs?
We set a deadline of what we want and then look at what needs to happen. So if we want to launch the phone in, say, June, we’ll need simcards, software, hardware, logistics etc. And all of those things have a bunch of to do’s. So it’s a lot of reverse engineering. And then there’s always new needs coming in as you go along, things you haven’t considered. So it’s about taking it as leanly as possible and looking at what the priorities are right now. Because we’re small and you can spread yourself too thin.
Prioritizing is really important in that we know that we can’t do everything just yet. So setting goals and figuring out what needs to get done to achieve them. Then we might discover in the process that we were too ambitious and we need to push it back a bit. In the beginning we thought a lot about what the biggest unknowns were that could potentially make or break us. So that’s one big thing we ask ourselves about the need — can this kill the project or is it okay if it’s on the back burner? And also considering if it’s customer-facing. It’s hard to predict things you’ve never done before.
And I think it’s also about staying self-aware — knowing that you don’t know always and be open to learning things. Obviously everyone has an opinion and you can be too open and get confused about your own beliefs. But I really try to ask my team members what’s working and what’s not and how they would do things differently. That also makes it easy to remember that you don’t always know best, because you get exposed to different view points all the time.
Speaking of the team, you seem to have a very strong vision of what the Light Phone is. Does all the team members have this shared vision and/or purpose?
I would say that everyone has their own take on it. Our CTO’s reasons for liking the form factor are some that I never thought of, but that’s the beauty of it. I know that what got one of our business advisors excited was the mindfulness part of it and the fact that we’re trying to tell a transparency story about manufacturing.
How do you build your relationships with your fellow team members?
I try to tell people how much they mean to me, and how much I appreciate their dedication and value. It’s not that I have to make it up, it’s true I understand I could not be doing this without them and I find that reminding them helps me appreciate and lets them know I appreciate them constantly. I’m really proud of the team that is coming together.
What do you look for when you bring new team members on?
We like experienced team members that can up-manage us as much as possible. People that understand what we need them to do and can execute on that without needing us to tell them, because they know better than we do about that aspect. Obviously morals and values and being able to click together is super important too. We like to hire friends.
What’s one of the most important things overall when it comes to working in a startup according to you?
I think for us, none of us want this to be a job, we want to have fun. And I think if it stops getting fun, then that would be really big concern and red flag for me. Obviously there are moments that are stressful and you have so many emails from people asking about their phones. But then you’ve got to remember that it’s people who are interested in your idea. I mean, I hate the inbox, but you can always be more positive in the way you think about it and then your answers will be much nicer and then people are happier in their responses. And that feels good. But yeah, we want to have fun.
This is my life and if I’m going to dedicate my life to this I want to enjoy it, because I’m not in it for the money.
So, what is fun for you?
Getting to see things you’ve made in the way you wanted to make them has always been the most fun part for me. But also working with people you like and doing things that are creatively challenging. And now that I’m doing this company I realize how seriously powerful it is. It’s almost a new medium for creating art, or spreading artful ideas, however you’d call it.
You should make your art into companies.
That’s a really powerful statement. Going back a bit to culture… Do you think startups in general need to think more about culture and how they work together?
Yeah, I think culture too often gets confused with this idea of “Do you have a foosball table?” or something like that. And that’s a very shallow way to look at culture and a very tiny aspect of it as well. I think in general startups are open and want to have a great culture but it’s not just something that you can fake. From what I see the attempts are kind of high-level or just about perks like a company t-shirt or free coffee and beer. Those are good perks, but I don’t think that’s how I see culture as. I think it has to be genuine and authentic from the founders. Hopefully we’re trying to go deeper than that shallow view of it, but we’re still trying to build ours.
What do you want to see in your culture?
I think empowering people is that deeper thing. Asking them what they think and having them feel ownership. No one wants to be a machine and do what they’re told all the time. People want to have opinions and if they don’t have any opinions it’s because no one told them that they could. So breeding a culture to help people realize their full potential, that they are creative and can come up with solutions.
“How can I make it so you feel excited, that you’re learning something, contributing and adding value to the company?”. That’s the question I ask.
Ah, that’s so great. I also believe in the power of empowering, so to speak, but feel like that doesn’t get as much focus.
Yeah, I know a lot of companies spend money and make people happy in the short term in their work. But empowering them is a different thing and I think startups and especially big companies overlook that a little bit. And I get it, as you grow and you have hundreds or so employees — how do you personally empower every one? I guess that’s where culture is trying to build a system that does that. We’re very far from that. It’s easy for me to say with six people on the team that “Yeah we all meet and love each other”. But I try to keep that awareness as we grow and think about how we can keep that going.
Thank you so much for meeting up! It’s been a pleasure. How can people get in touch with you and get to know more about the Light Phone?
Thank you! This is the stuff I need to keep thinking about, so just talking about it keeps it top of mind. You can read more about the Light Phone on our website and I’m on Twitter, but I’m not very active on there.
I’m researching culture building in startups for my MA in Digital Media Management at Hyper Island. For more info: http://bit.ly/building-startup-culture
