Inside The Invite-Only Slack Channel For Designers
100s Under 100, aka Hundos, has grown from a resource for freelancers into a community for designers.
It was summer 2017, and Andres Cuervo had just graduated from college and started work as a software engineer. When he wasn’t at his new job, he was building augmented reality experiences for fun–a way to express his interest in using code for design, which he couldn’t do at work.
Over the next few months, Cuervo made a new AR demo every day. He began posting his work in an invite-only Slack group called “100s Under 100,” aka “Hundos,” an online community where designers and developers share their work and help each other navigate the industry. With more than 350 members, 64 channels, and thousands of messages sent every month, it’s like a digital water cooler, where members source design jobs, get advice on how to be a freelancer, and collaborate with like-minded designers. Posting his demos to the group became a way for Cuervo to exercise his creativity. After seeing his experiments, a member of the group–who happened to be an art director at Google–reached out to Cuervo and asked him to lunch. This week, Cuervo starts a job as a prototyper at Google, where he’ll spend his days making and designing AR experiences.
