At Huddle, we’re in the business of powering more entrepreneurship in the world.

We want it to be easier for founders to build the future they believe in. And for creators to go independent and build equity and wealth on their own terms.

We build teams for building things. By taking out the slow, messy middle of finding teammates, Huddle helps more startups launch, scale and succeed.

Today, we’ve decided to go a step further.

I’m SO excited to announce the launch of the Huddle Venture Partner Program, focused on builder-investor hybrids bringing diverse ideas and bridging the gap between creators and founders.

For our inaugural cohort, we’ve selected ten VPs that actively support their network of startups and fellow builders. They’re partnering with us on everything from deal flow to advising startups on Huddle to mentoring builders in the community. We’re also working on creating opportunities for them to invest in the startups building on Huddle.

By creating an avenue for Venture Partners to support their portfolios and networks on Huddle, we hope to unlock more founders and creators building amazing things together.

Get to know our first cohort of Venture Partners (VP1) below:

Soleio — Designer × Investor

Soleio is an American designer-turned-investor based in London. He previously led early design efforts at Facebook, Messenger, and later Dropbox. Soleio now backs exceptional, design-forward startups at their initial stages, such as Figma, Framer, Vercel, Vanta, Synthesia, and many more around the globe. soleio.cv

Ben Blumenrose — Co-founder, Managing Partner, Designer Fund

Ben is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Designer Fund, where he backs exceptional founders and empowers them with design to improve the world. Before Designer Fund, Ben was a Design Lead at Facebook for over 5 years where he helped build products for nearly a billion people and grow Facebook’s world-class design team. He was also the Design Director at Varien which he helped build into one of the world’s leading e-commerce firms and a designer at CBS where he designed many of their primetime show web experiences.

Amber Illig — General Partner at The Council Capital

At The Council Capital, Amber invests in proven operators who are bringing the best of tech to legacy industries in Healthcare, Fintech, and Vertical SaaS at the earliest stages. In addition, she leads The Council Angels, a group of 80+ female operator-angels with experience at companies like Figma, Slack, Airbnb, Lyft, and Webflow. Before running The Council Capital full time, Amber held various operations leadership roles at companies like Cruise, Snap, Apple, Eli Lilly, and Atmos.

David Hoang — Head of Design at Webflow, Angel Investor

David Hoang is a design leader, angel investor, and writer. He’s currently Head of Design at Webflow and previously led design at One Medical, Black Pixel, and scaled the On Deck Design fellowship as a Design Partner. He’s invested in 25 seed stage startups to advise as a product and design operator.

Tara Tan — General Partner, IDEO Creative Capital

A designer and investor, Tara partners with technologists to bring their visions to the world. For the last 7 years, she helped lead the venture arm of global design & strategy firm, IDEO, building a $500M AUM portfolio with notable investments across fintech, emerging technologies, and consumer and enterprise software. Tara holds a Masters in Design & Technology from Harvard University, where she was appointed Co-Chair of Women in Design.

Chante Harris — ClimateTech Operator and Investor

Chante Harris has spent her career scaling nationwide campaigns, technologies, and ideas for the Obama Administration, Fortune 500 companies, and startups championing the energy transition. Named by Forbes as a 30 Under 30 in the Energy Category, NASDAQ as a Woman to Watch in 2022, ACEEE as a Champion for Energy Efficiency, GreenBiz as 30 Under 30 Leader and more. In addition to her work leading in climate tech and investment, Chante launched and built the only global digital collective and community that is 100% dedicated to advancing women of color working across the sustainability industry.

Steph Engle — Product Designer at Snapchat and Angel Investor

Steph is a Product Designer, investor, and multi-hyphenate based in Los Angeles. She previously designer all sorts of future-y subjects at Airbnb, Cruise, and Meta’s Reality Labs. She is a huge proponent of the future of fractional work via Huddle and other platforms–she dabbles herself in helping startups, scouting for a VC firm, running a short term rental, and selling horses.

Tom White — (Ghost)writer, Investor, Advisor

Tom works as writer, advisor, and investor. After stints at Stonks, On Deck, Google, he has a “portfolio career” writing, editing, researching, and ghostwriting professionally for a number of startup/F500 executives, VCs, and fund managers; advising for a fund of funds; consulting on web3/growth/storytelling/customer psychology for a number of different international B2B and B2C startups; and penning a free weekly newsletter on books and behavior, psychology and philosophy called White Noise.

Olga Orda — CEO, Hypemachine

The CEO of Hypemachine, Olga previously helped run the New York office of a national tech PR firm. She has counseled and launched over 50 tech companies in the media and led public relations campaigns for early stage tech to publicly traded tech companies, billion-dollar brands, Fortune 500 companies, VC firms, and hedge funds. Previously, she was at FTI Consulting (NYSE: FCN) where she helped lead the PR efforts for Richard Branson, HSBC, Coca Cola, and Allstate.

Dani Slocki — CEO, ARTivist, Host

Dani Slocki aka SLOWKEY is the CEO / Co-Founder of vSpace focusing on accessible virtual services that connect anyone, anywhere on any device. As a Creative Director, Producer, and Host SLOWKEY can single-handedly ideate, activate and launch any idea into a dreamy reality. She’s excited to connect with more brands and producers to create magical IRL-to-URL experiences between vSpace and her recent Brooklyn venue partner Arts District.

We’re thrilled to have this group join the Huddle community and for what’s next for our Venture Partner program!

Read more at huddle.works/venture-partner.

More to come,
- Steph Golik & Mick de Meijer

→ Founders, sign up here. Have a team building your project by next week.

→ Designers + builders, apply here. Join the Huddle community, work on cool sh*t.

→ Want to be a Huddle Venture Partner? Apply to join VP2 here.

Follow @stephgolik, @iammickdemeijer, or @withhuddle on Twitter for updates. DM us to get an invite code if you don’t know a Huddle member.

👐

Introducing the Huddle Venture Partner Program was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Huddle is in a really cool position. Though our core full-time team is currently 12, we have a community of over 600 amazing designers and builders who succeed when we succeed. We also have a platform that can magically pull together a huddle, or super team, around a project in a matter of hours.

So when it came to designing the Huddle brand, the answer was obvious.

We posted a project on our platform and “huddled” Huddle. Within days we had our team: Kyle Makischuk on web and product design, Lori White on copywriting and Michael Taylor (who’s created identities for brands like Asana) leading up logo design and visual identity.

Rewind to late 2020 when Huddle launched. As my fellow designer-founders can probably relate to, our original brand identity was created by me. It was also done in an afternoon and was, honestly, meant to be a placeholder. Two years later, with a community of 600+ and our seed round raised, we were ready to step up the Huddle identity. And most importantly, do it with the right group of people.

Since Huddle’s whole thing is connecting startups with super teams, we knew that great brand and marketing huddle need to…

1. Be made up experts who are awesome at what they do (of course!)
2. Deeply understand the space and empathize with our audience (in our case, our team was made up of literal Huddle users)
3. Be one step removed from the internal weeds of the company to bring a fresh perspective

Fortunately, our badass Huddle Partner Emily Yarbrough (formerly Red Antler) ensured our branding huddle had all three.

From the day we kicked off, I simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief and got extremely excited.

The why

Rebranding Huddle was a nuanced undertaking. In some ways the task was to start from scratch, while in other ways we wanted nothing to change.

The previous Huddle identity, in terms of measurable outcomes, was successful. We were wary of fixing things that weren’t broken. Ultimately, we revisited, solidified and leaned further into our beliefs we’ve had since day one.

We wanted our brand to put a flag in the ground. Our new identity is rooted in the two most important things Huddle does in the world:

1. It empowers the brightest minds to be their most creative and entrepreneurial selves.
2. It unlocks the power of teams, removing all barriers for people to assemble around ideas.

1. Empowering the brightest minds

Our team is inspired by Rick Rubin in a bunch of ways. When producing for some of the most creative people on the planet, he has an approach that’s akin to a simple gallery wall. He reduces himself in the process, leaving a void for the artist to fill. He even minimizes the design of his studio.

In Shangri-La, Rubin discusses with a philosopher friend the art of not being there, the art of creating space so that something can express itself — so it has room to speak.

We’re really into the art of creating space. Before getting into tech and startups, I was an architect. Mike, my co-founder, actually grew up building houses. So, the two of us often talk about Huddle as a physical space or clubhouse.

We both believe that, at its most fundamental and effective, Huddle is a container where the conditions are right for magical things to be created. Our brand needed to subscribe to this art of holding space for the creative to shine.

Plus, we’re hellbent on giving creators ownership in what they create – both in work they do for startups on the platform and in Huddle itself. The more our members and what they build shine through, the better.

2. Unlocking the power of teams

On our platform, whether you’re a builder or a founder, you’re there to find a huddle — your team that’s ready to build in the same direction you are.

Every time a small group of passionate people get together to work on something they care about, possibility opens up. A new story arc appears. We believe the right people in the right room can build the future they want to live in.

The world is going more entrepreneurial (both founders or freelancers are entrepreneurs, btw). As more top talent seeks independence, we believe magic hangs in the balance of working for yourself and working with others.

Working for yourself means you get to pick where you spend your time, how you want to get compensated, how you want to make an impact. But going independent doesn’t have to mean going it alone. In fact, when it comes to building things that make a dent, it’s almost always a team effort.

Huddle is the collaboration and community layer for the independent worker. We make it possible to work for yourself, not by yourself, making things you love with people you love.

Our logo shines a light on both ideas – reducing to make space and removing barriers to collaboration.

Our new logo

Our “H” tells the story of Huddle’s two core beliefs in five simple shapes.

It most directly speaks to a team coming together. The way it does so is by emphasizing the metaphor of reduction — by subtracting away, it creates unique and organic points of collaboration and connection.

The overall mark is also intentionally tight to evoke a feeling of density and togetherness.

All together now

With our new logo at the center, our branding huddle produced a beautiful and scalable identity. We leaned into white space, crafted a neutral yet vibrant palette and introduced a system of containers and spaces for creativity to fill.

We’re incredible excited about where it all landed and how we’ll expand it over time.

Huge thanks to our awesome brand huddle, MT, Kyle and Lori, and for contributions from Emily, Mike and Zain on the Huddle team.

More to come. 👐

-Steph

→ Apply here to join the Huddle design & build community.

→ Sign up here to pop-up a super team from the badass Huddle community to help design or build your next thing.

Follow @stephgolik or @withhuddle on Twitter for updates. DM me to get an invite code if you don’t know an existing member.

👐

The New Huddle: For Builders, by Builders was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Remote life has made us rethink what we spend time working on. The result is that more are pursuing entrepreneurial and independent routes — taking on side projects, leaving full-time jobs to work flexibly, and looking for ways to get more ownership and upside.

When we launched Huddle in late 2020, Mike and I set out to build the thing we both wished existed: a club to join instead of a company. A co-working space in the cloud that felt homey and communal, but also allowed the flexibility of choosing your own destiny and where you invest your time.

We’re excited to announce Huddle’s $3.4 million in seed funding from Wave Capital, IDEO and Outlander. We’re building a platform designed for creatives and builders to team up on startup projects for cash and equity.

Huddle combines the consistency of a W-2 gig with the benefits of an independent lifestyle. It’s a home base where people can work on the things they love, with the people they love, while earning a piece of what’s created.

Originally a Slack group of our friends and close collaborators, Huddle has grown into a social network-marketplace hybrid used by startups and freelancers around the world. We’ve yet to pay for marketing and are growing based on word of mouth among collaborators. Our platform has a running beta with over 500 members and a waitlist of over 2,500 people. Throughout 2021, we saw organic user growth of 60% month over month and — a milestone we’re especially proud of — members have collectively earned over $1M on Huddle.

To join the platform, you need to be invited by a friend who wants to collaborate with you. Once you get onto the network, you’ll find a steady stream of “Huddles”, or teams, looking for more members to hop in and contribute. Today, Huddles can only be posted by vetted startups to keep the quality of projects on the platform high.

Our community currently serves two kinds of product and design experts:

1. Those with a full-time gig, but exploring impactful side projects and leveraging their expertise as advisors.
2. Those pursuing a fully-independent, nomadic lifestyle looking to Huddle for consistent work and community.

We are not a freelance marketplace — Huddle isn’t about bidding out hours against other members. We’re a community of experts that team up to work together on projects and earn ownership in the process.

In general, we talk less about individual hours or rates and talk more about contribution. A member who helps bring a project into the community gets paid for that. A team comes together usually by one member pulling in a web of collaborators and they get attributed for playing that role too. It doesn’t feel or act like a traditional one-to-one, web2 marketplace.

Here’s how Huddle actually works:

1. When an approved customer comes in, they tell the community what they need — a new brand, a mobile app, a couple great product designers, whatever it is.
2. Lead members of the community can latch on first, help them scope it further and pull more members in as needed.
3. Huddle facilitates easy ongoing transactions between customer and team, whether it’s cash, equity, or crypto. In 2021, 14% of all projects on Huddle were paid in equity or crypto. 💸

When raising our seed, we opted for a very Huddle-y approach. In addition to being backed by Wave Capital, IDEO, Paige and Leura Craig’s Outlander, Nomad Capital, Miami Angels, The Council, and Gaingels, we brought on builder-angel hybrids such as Joe Zadeh, previous Head of Experiences and VP of Product at Airbnb, and Amber Illig, previous Ops and GTM lead at Snap and Cruise. We also raised a “community seed round”, where 750 unaccredited creators from our community and beyond invested via Republic.

We plan to use the funds to expand our platform and serve more members and customers. We’re also incredibly excited to build paths to more ownership and investment opportunities for our community.

This takes us a step closer to creating a world where the most ambitious and talented people spend their time working on big problems instead of big companies.

We’re here to give more people the space and place to be their most creative and entrepreneurial selves.

– Steph, Mike and the growing Huddle fam 🌱

→ Apply here to join the Huddle community as a contributor or lead member.

→ Sign up here to get a pop-up team from the badass Huddle community to help design or build your next thing.

Follow @stephgolik or @withhuddle on Twitter for updates. DM me to get an invite code if you don’t know an existing member.

👐

Huddle’s $3.4M seed by Wave Capital, IDEO and Outlander was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

how the great resignation and web3 are changing our relationship with work and the fate of employment

Nearly two years into the pandemic, remote work has become the new normal. Most companies have embraced this reality too. A16z surveyed 226 founders of early and late stage startups and discovered that 86% will continue the concept of remote or hybrid work.

For companies that haven’t, employees are holding their remote ground. Apple mandated that employees return to office in mid-2021 and many of them said no — something that would seem unthinkable until recently. They would rather quit their prestigious jobs at Apple than come back to the office.

Bhoka.eth on Twitter: "it feels like everyone is quitting their jobs. we LOVE to see it. / Twitter"

it feels like everyone is quitting their jobs. we LOVE to see it.

And so begins the Great Resignation. The term ‘Great Resignation’ was likely coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor at Mays Business School of Texas A&M University in May 2021. Since then, 20 million people have resigned, with at least 1 in 4 people quitting their job in 2021. The trend doesn’t seem to be abating any time soon.

Return-to-office mandates may have been the tipping point. But, what’s at the heart of the Great Resignation is deeper. It’s the culmination of more introspection, a need for flexibility and a desire to live a fulfilled life.

As we gain momentum in 2022, it’s clear that work is in a state of change. At a minimum, The Great Talent Reshuffling during and after the Great Resignation will force higher expectations of flexibility, fulfillment, and ownership in the roles companies are hiring for.

a new lens and new expectations

Given that you’ll spend some 90,000 hours at work over your lifetime, it’s pretty fair that you’d want to take control of that time and make sure it’s meaningful to you. In philosophy, for example, work and meaning have always been inseparable. It’s been written about in Japanese philosophy as early as the 8th century and famously in Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”. The Japanese term Ikigai (“reason for being”) speaks to the relationship between the search for meaning and what we create. In other words, work is meaning, or work should bring about meaning.

The cultural undercurrents shifting around work will result in more than job hopping. The shared reframe provided by two years of remote work paired with decentralization on the internet may very well shake the whole foundation of work and our desire to be an employee at all.

“Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.” — Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to be Disliked

Remote work has opened doors to new opportunities and forms of independence in work. Most of all, it’s opened our eyes to an abundant world of options that may have been there the whole time.

I’m a business, man // the multi-hyphenate

As more people are increasingly choosing what they spend their time on, they’re realizing that they don’t have to choose just one thing. In fact, choosing multiple work streams creates less dependency on a single stream to sustain you, both in income and in fulfillment.

Even in Ikigai, it was customary for Japanese centenarians to have multiple sources of income.

“One hundred percent of the seniors we interviewed in Ogimi had a primary and a secondary occupation. Most of them kept a vegetable garden as a secondary job, and sold their produce at the local market.”

This resulting “Income Stack” creates resiliency. Plus––back to meaning––the sum of the stack is greater than its parts. It allows you to tap into more of the facets that make up who you are. It’s the opportunity to bring more of yourself into what you contribute to the world.

Steph Golik 🌴 on Twitter: "At @withhuddle we talk a lot about giving startup creators the freedom to build and flex their ideal "Income Stack".A lot like @hunterwalk's "Multi-SKU", but made up of fractional contributions, passion projects, earned equity (creative capital invested in co's) + PT/FT gigs. / Twitter"

At @withhuddle we talk a lot about giving startup creators the freedom to build and flex their ideal "Income Stack".A lot like @hunterwalk's "Multi-SKU", but made up of fractional contributions, passion projects, earned equity (creative capital invested in co's) + PT/FT gigs.

At Huddle, we include in that income stack your sweat equity investments too — the work you’re picking up ownership for that creates even more income diversification. It’s really all about knowing you have choices and getting to choose them. Choose work you’re excited about, choose where you want to spend energy, choose how you build your income stack.

Tied closely with this is the growing allure of being your own boss. In a recent survey, 53% of Gen Z plan to run their own company. Unsurprising with all the trends we’ve been discussing, entrepreneurship is exploding.

This new independent world of work may sound a little lonely though. What about company culture? Back to making choices, community and teammates is another choice.

your squad > your co-workers

We’ve previously established that you’ll likely spend 90,000 hours (~one-third of your life and half of your waking hours) at work. In fact, after the age of 20, spending time with coworkers forms one of the largest chunks of your time. On par with the time you spend with your partner, and far less than you would spend with your parents, children, or friends.

When you think about it, that’s an insane amount of time to spend with a group of people that you have no agency in choosing.

When you have the freedom to decide what you work on, you get much more of a say on who you work alongside and spend that time with. Which is pretty magical.

On Huddle, you can bring your squad onto projects with you or form a new one by getting to know people through working together.

When it comes to culture and community, there are so many skill and interest-based digital communities. The number of active DAOs is up 660% since 2019. You probably don’t need a W-2 job to find human connection and belonging around work.

With all this in mind, the reality is that many people still choose the status quo and will continue to. There are plenty of concrete reasons to stick to the path paved by the crowd. Let’s unpack the perks of W-2 and dispel some myths along the way.

the draw of the W-2 life

Stating the obvious, a W-2 comes with insurance, benefits and income security. There’s also the notion that you may have better work-life balance and better pay. What’s the reality? Where are the gaps between being independent and being employed?

insurance

Only 24% of full-time freelancers have health insurance through a self-purchased plan. The average annual cost of health insurance in the US is $7470, of which employers have traditionally covered three quarters. This creates a gap and a hurdle for anyone who wants to quit their salaried jobs to explore other avenues.

However, this gap is being filled by services like Catch. Catch is rebundling the services that a company provides, just for freelancers. They offer freelancers a plan which automatically sets aside taxes for 1099 income, health and dental plans for individuals or family and automates the split of income toward a retirement account and toward savings.

Catch has seen exponential growth in the last year, evidenced by the tripling of its user base between July 2020 to July 2021. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick as COVID started,” said Alexandra Gervis, PhD, Lead Policy and Partner Engagement from Catch.

With more than 10 million people considering freelancing, according to an Upwork survey, Catch and other services are making the transition way easier.

income security

Another reason why many people stick to a traditional job lifestyle is because it offers income security.

The reality is, however, an employer can let you go at any time with 15-days notice. Imagine if a freelancer or digital agency had just one client (i.e. one source of income), would this classify as secure income? Probably not.

The biggest difference is that W-2 jobs remove the task of “finding work”. As an independent, no one is dropping work off on your desk or paying you between projects. You have to seek out work, learn how to sell and, over time, establish the network and collaborators that can seek for you.

Again, though, emerging platforms are making this way easier. For example, on Huddle, the community is collectively attracting and closing new work. This makes finding your next project as simple as putting your hand up and joining the team.

work-life balance

One of the inherent benefits of remote work is that it brings life closer to work. 73% of people said that working from home improved their work-life balance, allowing them to spend more time with their partner, family, or pets.

At the same time, working from home on multiple projects can require even more balance and time management than before. This is another example of choice. It’s in your control to create a schedule and workload that works for you rather than your employers. There is power in that. There’s also a level of discipline and structure that can be learned.

making more money

Given rising inflation rates, it now makes more sense than ever to unlock your wealth potential by stacking and diversifying your income streams.

As we mentioned before, working at one company makes your salary bound and, in some ways, fragile. It’s also likely locking you into a low rate of increase — probably detrimentally low. In a recent tweet by Pieter Levels of NomadList, he posits that if you haven’t received a raise in salary, your income has actually decreased by 10%.

@levelsio on Twitter: "📉 If you didn't get a salary raise in the last year, your income has now gone down by at least 10%Talk to your employer about inflation, it's only fair you get paid more nowhttps://t.co/hA0brBBZ5j pic.twitter.com/30QsXb0IIF / Twitter"

📉 If you didn't get a salary raise in the last year, your income has now gone down by at least 10%Talk to your employer about inflation, it's only fair you get paid more nowhttps://t.co/hA0brBBZ5j pic.twitter.com/30QsXb0IIF

The projected average annual salary increases of 3% won’t cut it anymore, since it doesn’t keep up with consumer inflation that is increasing at 5.7%, which is at a 13-year high.

Being independent means having the control to dynamically set your own compensation.

There are clearly several benefits in leaving the W-2 world. The reasons to stay in a traditional full-time job are in many ways fading. Everyone’s situation is different — but it ultimately comes down to choices and the fact is that you have more of them than ever.

beginning to choose

Starting can begin with small choices. Some have started their journey to independent work by first building an audience on Twitter, Substack, or a podcast. While others have chosen to work with friends on side projects or join a builder community to start contributing in small ways. These both can likely be done while staying employed, or by making time during weeknights and weekends.

We spoke to Nick deWilde who writes the popular newsletter Jungle Gym on Substack about his journey:

“My newsletter was really helpful for prototyping independence. By sticking to a publishing schedule and growing my audience, I got to feel what it’s like to prioritize my own projects. The great opportunities that came from consistently publishing ultimately gave me the confidence I needed to take the leap.

When others ask about how to go independent I advise that they find ways to prototype it before making a decision.”

At Huddle, we have tons of builders in the community exploring the transition from full-time employees to full-time fractional contributors. Many have made the leap to fully independent while others enjoy fluctuating between the two worlds. It’s “Choose your own adventure” in multiple ways. Since you can jump on different projects at different capacities (from 0.5 day/wk to 5 days/wk) and can choose to get paid in cash, token or equity, you can really make it your own.

all roads lead to abundance

We’ve seen that The Great Resignation is a direct consequence of the search for meaning and cultivating the kind of life we’ve always wanted to lead. For a long time our lives have filled the blank areas around work; now we want our work to jive with and truly enrich our lives.

This is innate and old news. What we contribute or create (our work), is directly tied to the human condition and our self actualization. According to Ichiro Kishimi in The Courage to be Disliked, the philosophies of Alfred Adler and Plato state:

“If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that ‘I am of use to someone’.”

Being “of use” is the work part. The “to someone” piece is just as important.

The new abundant world of work isn’t just about the individual freedom to choose what you spend time creating. It’s about having the mindset that more people contributing in the ways they want to is better for everyone.

The opposite, a scarcity mindset, is the belief that life is a zero-sum game where the size of the pie is fixed and each player has to compete to get a larger slice of that pie. Whereas, an abundance mindset allows you to see the world as a positive-sum game where you can grow the size of the pie for everyone. Ben Horowitz, founder of a16z, in an interview puts it across as:

“If you believe there is plenty in the world for everyone and you are always happy to see people who contribute succeed, then you become part of “team contribution.”

If you’re also hanging out in the cryptosphere, you may have heard the term ‘wagmi’ or ‘we’re all gonna make it’. It’s yet another reflection of the abundance mindset where people play positive-sum games enabled by community ownership.

Taking a moment of pause in these early days of 2022, it seems abundantly clear where the puck is going. Huddle’s incredibly excited to be a part of pushing it there.

The world Huddle’s creating is one where ambitious people join a distributed club, instead of a company — empowering independence without trading away community and support. Where people are given freedom to contribute in all the ways they want to, wherever they want to, and we’ll collectively build incredible lives and things together. 🚀

If this piece landed with you, you probably would be into joining Huddle.

→ Apply here to join our builder community as a contributor or lead.

→ Apply here to get a pop-up team to help design or build your next thing. We’re in beta and only accepting a small % of startups.

Follow @stephgolik or @withhuddle on Twitter for updates. DM us to get an invite code into the beta product.

Big thanks to Diana Hawk, Michael Saloio, Kavir Kaycee and Jordan T. Jones for their contributions.

the abundant world of work ⍏ was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How ownership is changing and tearing down the old guards of wealth-building.

The trend is clear and the FOMO is real: more and more people want skin in the game. At the same time, getting ownership is becoming more accessible to more people, trades and age groups.

The underlying principles around who can own what and how to become an owner are changing — and quickly. We’ve seen examples of this first with Robinhood and crypto, and now with startups, NFTS and even movies and music.

Let’s explore four macro trends that are expanding access to ownership and what they mean for creators, founders, and investors who want to play The Upside Game.

Everyone’s an investor™️

Investing is more accessible than ever.

There used to be a ridiculous number of regulatory hurdles to buying and trading stocks. At the least stringent level, acquiring a brokerage account was required to attain shares of public companies. Many people were gated out of investing in the market and its wealth creation.

Now, Robinhood’s commission-free trading platform and Public (my personal favorite platform, inspiring this section’s header) have invited an explosive number of retail investors into the world of stocks. “Nonprofessional” investors like me now account for 23% of market flow, up from 10% in 2010. Crypto has further accelerated the trend with its 24x7 investing cycle.

Even as the walls around public equity ownership fell, another blocker remained: accreditation laws. Equity ownership in private companies used to be an exclusive club with unrealistic eligibility requirements. As an individual, the SEC prevented you from acquiring ownership in private companies unless you were accredited and had certain characteristics (you were already rich). This meant that the vast majority of Americans were legally prevented from getting ownership in early-stage startups which offer the most upside.

Until literally this year! New crowdfunding regulation enables anyone to invest and get equity in startups under the right conditions. Platforms like Republic are taking advantage and making it even easier for more and more people to add “angel investor 😇 ” to their Twitter bios.

This new relationship between private companies and who can back them also invites the possibility for more strategic and user-driven fundraising tactics. Startups like Gumroad and Huddle have opened up funding rounds to their own communities and potential users, aligning interests and ownership in new powerful ways.

It goes beyond startups, too. Just a few days ago Republic launched a way to invest in songs by your favorite artists. By investing, you own rights to the piece of music (represented as an NFT) and get royalties when it makes money.

Investing hasn’t just become easier and more accessible; it’s gotten a lot more fun, gamified and social. The cool thing is — the more social it gets, the more kinds of things you can get ownership in and the better your potential returns.

Every community’s an investor

Even within traditional markets like stock trading, the wave is clearly pushing toward social and community-oriented investing. wsb is an obvious example of the power of a network that invests together. Tendies recently launched to double down and create a purpose-built app for these communities.

Social-powered stock trading is one thing — stocks are already broken up into pieces that can be bought by individuals. But what about bigger, clunkier assets? Pooling money together with friends to buy stuff isn’t a new concept but, with fractional ownership platforms, it’s becoming way easier to combine capital. For example, Pacaso makes it click-button simple to go in on a second home with friends, something that might be unattainable solo.

This is inherently a Web3 trend as well. In the NFT world, where jpegs are going for luxury prices, people are forming collectives to become co-owners of a digital piece of art. And DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) are communities collectively owned and managed by its members on the blockchain.

What’s been discussed so far mostly involves new democratized ways to get ownership by investing capital — by ourselves or with a group. But, where it gets even more interesting is how the culture of upside is bleeding into how we invest our time and work.

Every creator’s an investor

Just a few years ago, a social media influencer would be paid per-post by brands. Brands realized this isn’t the best way to create a long-term relationship and influencers realized they were missing out on the upside they were, in fact, creating.

Now, many influencers are getting paid in equity for posts rather than a flat fee. This is powering more aligned and successful brand partnerships, such as Ember. The company approached singers Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas to become investors who, in turn, leveraged their content and fans to promote Ember mugs.

In the world of startups, PartyRound is blending these worlds in really cool ways by enabling content creation as a way to invest in a startup’s fundraising round.

However, this concept is not new. There are several examples from the early 2010s that foreshadowed this trend. In 2005, the muralist who painted the walls at Facebook’s headquarters was compensated in stock. At the time of IPO in 2012, those shares were worth 200 million. 🤑

Another example was Sandwich Co, the production house that creates witty launch videos of startups. Instead of taking compensation in only cash, they structured deals with a mix of cash, cash+equity, only equity, or rev share. This was to help fledgling startups who were short on cash to get their word out and led to some wildly successful companies like Slack, Square, and recently Descript and Mighty.

TK on Twitter: "if you're freelancing for breakout startups, negotiate for equity or ask to investeveryone talks about charging high hourly rates but for the right companies, equity is kingwish I was told this earlier / Twitter"

if you're freelancing for breakout startups, negotiate for equity or ask to investeveryone talks about charging high hourly rates but for the right companies, equity is kingwish I was told this earlier

The most interesting piece of investing “creative capital” or “sweat equity” is that the creator leverages their skillset and time to influence the outcome of their investment. If a designer is creating a brand for a company that they own a piece of, they know they’re able to increase the odds of their investment’s success by putting in the extra thought work and producing a killer brand. It’s the ultimate alignment of goals.

Every creator community’s an investor

What happens when you take the pooling concept and apply it to a group of talented creators coming together for a project to get ownership?

Packy McCormick frames this concept in a helpful way when talking about the liquid startup Maple in his piece on the Cooperation Economy:

“That’s a Liquid Super Team in action: a team of people with different strengths…committing to work on it a few hours a week. Everyone retains optionality, and everyone has upside.”

Again, these trends are spreading across industries. In the film industry, the 24 year-old Emmy award-winning actress Zendaya created a unique financial structure for ‘Malcolm & Marie’ where the cast and crew were given part of the upside.

“I’ve never been in a situation or in a spot where I can say that not only did I invest into my own movie, but I also own part of my own movie. So when it does well, I do well and I’m taken care of on that side as well so my contributions are valid.” — Zendaya

The trends of ownership, co-ownership, creator ownership, and cooperation economy are accelerating and merging. New platforms are coming on the scene that connect these dots. ✨

Where Huddle fits

On Huddle, independent creators join into teams to fractionally contribute to startup projects in return for equity, tokens, or cash.

Here’s how it works: Take Claire, a product designer and thought leader who’s interested in using her skills to invest in companies, especially those working on climate change.

1. Claire receives an invite to Huddle from one of her top designer friends. She logs in and sees a list of vetted startup projects and which of her friends are working on what.
2. She joins a project for a new climate-tech startup along with an old colleague she’s excited to work with again and a few new collaborators.
3. She’ll get a mix of cash and equity which she can track right inside the platform. Claire commits to two days per week so she can keep working on a few other projects too.
4. The project kicks off and Claire starts collaborating with her new team, all working toward something they really care about.

With remote and flexible work on the rise, more and more creators like Claire will leverage their time towards projects that solve meaningful problems and provide real upside. Plus, since Huddle offers both cash and equity opportunities, creators can choose their risk tolerance and build an income stack of earnings and creative capital invested.

Why this all matters: Wealth-building and economic mobility

Naval on Twitter: "You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom. / Twitter"

You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.

Wealth creation is only a zero-sum game when it can only be played by the few and not the many.

Financial independence is about decoupling your ability to earn from the actual hours you work. Throughout history the wealthiest individuals didn’t become successful because they were able to work more hours than anyone else. They built wealth by owning the mechanisms by which value is created. They owned equity in companies.

Education and access historically have been the hurdles to ownership and financial freedom. Updates to the regulatory framework and access to education unleashed by the internet are changing the game and letting the whole stadium play.

With this democratized foundation in place, a growing number of platforms are layering on workflows and experiences that reduce friction and open up entirely new ownership categories. While it started with ease and access to making investments in public markets, it has now expanded to investing in startups, homes with friends, the rights to songs and much more. And while having capital used to be a requirement, it’s now possible to become an investor by spending only time, passion and talent.

The gates around ownership are hanging off their hinges. The upside game is now available for almost anyone of any age with an internet connection to play. With the future Web3 is moving toward, access to and interest in ownership seems to only be expanding and accelerating. The exciting part is watching what doors open next. 🚪

Why we wrote this

This article was written by the founding team at Huddle: Steph, Mike, Sam and Diana.

On Huddle, creators invest in startups with their time. They can build a portfolio of small bets and leverage their skills to increase their odds of upside, all while retaining optionality and even keeping a full-time job on the side. At the same time, we’re helping incredible founders launch and grow their startups with speed and talented builders on their side.

So, it goes without saying that ownership, particularly for creators and builders, is close to our hearts. We even partnered with Republic to carve out a “community seed round” to make owning a piece of Huddle as accessible as possible. It’s live now for a limited time if you’d like to invest. 🌱

If you’re a founder or creator excited about the Huddle platform…

Creators → Apply to the join the community

Founders → Apply to spin up a super team of creators

Special shout out to Kavir Kaycee, Jordan T. Jones and Grace Lemire for contributing to this piece. ❤️

References
1 Bloomberg Intelligence Estimates, 2021

The Upside Game was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re excited and proud to announce the launch of Huddle today

Huddle makes it easier and more affordable for startups to plug into highly-skilled product and design teams. Founders tell us what they need, from help building a product or brand from scratch to relaunching with fresh designs and new growth strategy, and we match them with a hand-picked fractional team from our creator community. Our teams get work done through a series of hands-on, managed sprints that lighten the load for founders.

In private beta since September, we’ve been humbled by the energy surrounding our creator community and by the number of founders trusting us as a partner. We’re excited to open our doors to more founders and creators and share more broadly what Huddle is about.

Solving the startup talent problem

Over the past six years, I’ve spent a ton of time talking with early-stage founders about the problems they face — through my work at different startup studios, running an entrepreneur dinner series, and by working directly inside a few startups too. Founders often think they’re initial challenge is funding… but funding for what? The answer I’ve consistently come around to is talent, both for the founders I’ve worked with and for myself too.

Securing an experienced, hard-working team is still too hard for startups. Having funding from a prominent accelerator or VC doesn’t necessarily bridge the talent gap, and even excellent co-founders can’t handle everything themselves. The current landscape for finding fractional product and design talent is ill-equipped to meet the specific needs of startups:

1. Freelance marketplaces are cost-effective but difficult to navigate and find top talent on. Often the work founders need help on isn’t their own forte, so scrolling through pages of profiles without bearings on what “good” really looks like is challenging.
2. Agencies are great for certain work, but the best ones are too expensive for startups. They also aren’t typically run by startup folks, which means the unique considerations of early-stage companies can go missed and incentives can be misaligned.
3. Insider referrals via VC platforms or other closed networks are high-trust and vetted talent, but obviously limited to highly-connected or funded startups. This isn’t always equitable or generative for newcomers and underrepresented founders.

These options all require hurdles to jump through and time spent in vain. All the while, founders are blocked from building the company. With Huddle, we’re making it frictionless for founders to uncover and team-up with some of the top designers available — many of which just so happen to be increasingly taking on freelance jobs and working from home.

The new home for creators

With more work going remote, the world’s most talented people have increased time and interest in freelancing. Some are taking on side-hustles while they work full-time or start something of their own, while others are full-time freelancing. This new class of workers is opting for freedom; in how they work, who they work with, and what they work on.

There’s currently no home for the modern-day worker and we’re creating it, providing a steady flow of interesting projects, member resources, back-office tools, business support, and most importantly, a community of people who work just like you. Huddle projects almost always require more than one freelancer, and teamwork is a core virtue of ours. Who said company culture, accountability, and peer support had to come with a W-2?

Aligning incentives and creating opportunity with sweat equity 💸

Finally, along with our beta launch, we’ve introduced a new way for startups to pay for their Huddle Team — sweat equity pricing. We’re giving founders unmatched access to expert builders, all with startup experience, without exhausting their most valuable resource — cash.

Our startup customers and freelance builders are equally excited about the move. Here are a few reasons we love the sweat equity agreement:

• Speed — Founders spend too much time navigating freelancer marketplaces and interviewing expensive agencies. We give founders access to the flexible talent needed to keep moving cost-effectively.
• Reduced paperwork — In the earliest stages, startups often haven’t yet created a mechanism to issue employee equity. The FAST agreement solves this for advisors but isn’t expansive enough for contract-based employees. Using the SAFE, we created a new deal that’s easy to understand, to account for, and minimizes negotiation and related paperwork.
• Aligned incentives — So far, we’ve invested ~$60k+ in sweat equity, allocating over half that sum to freelancers. Sweat equity ensures everyone has skin in the game. Founders know we’re in this for the long haul, while freelancers get to become sweat “investors” by doing what they love.

By removing the friction for capital-strapped founders to get work done and launch and for talented freelancers to consistently find interesting work and become angel investors, we hope to be unlocking a new class of company builders and investors.

Where we stand

Since launching our beta, we’ve passed on over $100k in value to our builders. What’s more, we’re starting to see the true compound interest of our platform unlocked through community — freelancers that are also founders, founders that have referred their freelancer friends, and we’ve even got investors in the group chiming in and advising on projects.

Huddle is the place entrepreneurial people of any style can explore being their own boss and pursue professional freedom. We’re proud to be building this kind of empowerment platform and so excited to keep going.

🎉 So, it’s official! We’re open for biz. If you’re a founder or know one who could use a pop-up team to help keep moving, tell us what you need to build.

If you’re a creator or builder that wants to jump onto projects full-time or from time-to-time, apply to join the community! 👟

Introducing Huddle 👋 was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A friend recently shared with me the following 4-phase framework for building partnerships: (1) Admiration, (2) Chemistry, (3) Commitment, and (4) Compatibility.

Below is an adaptation of my friend’s framework for co-founders. I’ve found choosing and managing partnerships in early-stage startups to be especially important. Good relationships drive incredible results, and bad relationships regularly kill startups.

A four-phase framework for building co-founder relationships:

1. Admiration — Thinking or feeling that someone will be a good fit. Whether it’s a resume, skillset, or general vibe, you’re interested in creating with this person.
2. Chemistry — Thoughts and feelings are mutual. You’re both interested in working together. Early conversations and co-creation is going well.
3. Commitment — You’ve agreed to work on something together. It could be a problem space, a product, a company, or something else.
4. Compatibility — The ability to make new commitments consistently (i.e., workability) while maintaining high productive energy levels.

People generally overvalue the first three phases and undervalue compatibility. Being committed to something does not mean it’s working. When something is working, high levels of productive energy are the norm. Compatibility lets organizations evolve, and focusing on it can help assess the future value of the culture you are trying to create.

Compatibility = maximum workability at minimum energy spent

The ability to make new agreements in partnership = workability. These agreements can be day-to-day tasks like roles and project deadlines, or high-level decisions like equity and compensation. Compatibility is the ability to regularly craft these agreements (workability) while keeping high productive energy levels. It’s like agility for relationships: the power to quickly change course to support the commitment.

Commitment vs. compatibility

Let’s say that your co-founder consistently delivers work late. Presenting work late is an easy example because the expectation is clear — things are either delivered on time or not. Real business consequences arise when work is late. A new agreement is needed to turn things around. Agreeing to deliver work on time is a commitment.

Compatibility happens when new commitments come easy, at minimal energy spent. In startups, things change quickly and often. Speed and momentum are everything. Relationships that take too much work can be draining and steer things off course.

Compatible partnerships are energy-producing

Compatible partnerships are energy-producing. Incompatible ones are energy-draining — there’s a level at which the amount spent working outweighs the reward.

But how does one measure how much energy is being spent, especially in the beginning, before working together? There’s no perfect science, and everyone’s different. Here are a few ways to think about mapping compatibility.

1. Focus on the facts and the data. Metrics in the business are either improving or not. The facts alone can tell the story of the partnership.
2. Ask whether you feel more energized or less from an interaction with a coworker. For me, the answer is almost always surprisingly clear.
3. Keep a partnership scorecard and use it to check-in regularly. The scorecard can contain data on the business (KPIs) and intangibles, too, like feeling energized or not.
4. When the facts or the scorecard are off-track, schedule a conversation as fast as possible. Create new agreements and get things back flowing.
5. If several attempts don’t turn things around, choose to rework the partnership. Sometimes the best way to regain energy is to move on.

Focus on compatibility

Compatibility is the ability to create new agreements repeatedly while sustaining high levels of productive energy. Said more straightforward, compatible relationships work. Partnerships that lack compatibility are like cars that break down too much. Ones that work can swiftly change gears and keep moving.

Compatibility is undervalued was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The best venture capitalists and accelerators all insist that entrepreneurs need a co-founder to succeed. We think that is demonstrably and obviously false.

According to Reboot, roughly 65% of companies fail because of co-founder conflict. A study by The University of Southern California Marshall School showed that 10% of co-founders break-up within the first year and a whopping 45% end by year four.

To learn why the ecosystem places so much emphasis on co-foundership, we surveyed top VCs in New York. Here are the top three reasons we found that investors prefer backing companies with two people at the top:

1. Building a company is lonely, and founders need personal support
2. Team building is “the” critical skill of any good entrepreneur
3. There needs to be one technical person at the helm

We completely agree with all three reasons. Where we differ is on the solution. The emphasis VCs place on co-founding teams is outdated, over-generalized, and dismisses entrepreneurs who would be better served choosing a different path. Specifically, we see three big under-appreciated risks that the emphasis on co-foundership puts on startups.

The under-appreciated risks of finding a co-founder

Time wasted

Lacking a co-founder, accelerator programs like Y-Combinator and Techstars are near impossible to get into. Several VCs we surveyed suggested they would *never* invest in a first-time solo founder. In response, founders stack investor decks with photos and bios of people who aren’t actually working on the business. They choose partners who aren’t yet committed and might never be. The tragedy is that founders waste precious time and energy recruiting people who aren’t dedicated, rather than shipping products, talking to customers, and building a business.

Shotgun co-founder weddings

The second risk is shotgun co-founder weddings. A business partnership is arguably more involved and time-intensive than marriage. The co-founder divorce rates above speak for themselves. A proper pre-engagement dating period is needed to determine alignment and compatibility.

Competing vision

Building a startup is about sparking and maintaining momentum. Introducing a second founder presents a competing vision, even if not immediately apparent. It’s incredibly rare that two people share the same vision and strategy. Staying solo can allow you to quickly explore different directions, validating or invalidating ideas on a hunch without needing buy-in from anyone else. Divergent thinking is great, but only when communication allows for healthy conflict. Turning initial chemistry into a compatible partnership takes time. The best co-founding teams are the ones who have worked together at length and know how to cooperate.

Co-founders are ONE way — not THE way

There is an abundance of resources available to entrepreneurs today. Finding a co-founder is only one of the possible routes to building a successful startup team and it’s not right for everyone.

Here are some other paths and resources we’ve seen work:

Utilize flexible talent to validate your idea

There are new platforms that allow founders to find cost-effective designers, marketers, engineers, accountants, and more. There are also agencies that build great prototypes, produce high-quality investor decks, and launch products quickly. Most will work for a mix of cash and equity just like full-time employees. As a word of caution, be wary of agencies that offer free or heavily discounted work for large (5%+) upfront equity stakes without vesting. You get the quality of work that you pay for. The average agency has two months of cash in the bank at any given time. Thus, agencies do not typically have the time or bandwidth to service your startup effectively because their best people are working on their larger, high-paying clients.

It’s typically easier for founders to attract top talent with a little momentum.

Using flexible resources early on can help you get to market faster and cost-effectively test your product idea on real potential customers. It can bring you the technical insight you’re wanting and help you uncover what traits you are actually seeking in a potential co-founder or full-time hire. Having a working prototype and early customer data also helps attract investors. It’s typically easier for founders to attract top talent with a little momentum.

Create an advisory board

Advisory boards are typically composed of experienced entrepreneurs or industry experts who work for small amounts of vested equity (0.10% — 0.25%, two-year vesting, 3-month cliff). They are a great way to utilize senior people for guidance and advice. It’s like leveraging 80% of somebody’s wisdom at 10% of the cost it’d take to bring them on full-time. When hiring advisors, use a contract that ties equity amounts to a level of expertise and a time commitment. Hold your advisors accountable to the agreement. Do not bring on advisors for names alone. As a rule of thumb, reserve equity stakes for people who are helping you build over the long run.

Combat loneliness with leadership coaching

Building a startup can be a lonely road. This is the top reason VCs advocate for co-founders. We’ve seen great success in founders combatting loneliness both by composing an advisory board and hiring a leadership coach. While good leadership coaches cost money, finding the right one can be a game-changer. They can point out your blind spots, help you maintain high energy, and solidify the “why” behind your founder journey. While the last piece might seem trivial, our experience has been quite the opposite. Becoming a founder means giving up some piece of — if not all — your financial safety. It also means having to create the support system a steady job provides. There will inevitably be challenges, so you want to make sure what you’re building is important enough to you to push through when things get tough. Lastly, leadership coaches can help you get good at… leadership! A skill that will come in handy no matter which road you take in building your team.

If team building is “the” critical skill of any good entrepreneur, the first step is knowing that there’s more than one way to do it.

Choose A Path That Works For YOU

There are multiple ways to be a founder and endless ways to build a team. Co-founders are just one of those ways. Once your idea gets traction, it’s easier to attract talented full-time people. You might just find that perfect co-founder after all. Or you might find that having a co-founder isn’t the path for you. Instead of getting attached to finding that perfect person, why not view the earliest phases of building your company through the lens of dating and learning? Understand what you’re really looking for in a team. Utilize advisors and leadership coaches to your advantage. Hire flexible talent to validate that your product or service is something people really want. Focus on building a support system based on mutual respect and trust.

If team building is “the” critical skill of any good entrepreneur, the first step is knowing that there’s more than one way to do it.

You Don’t Need A Co-founder was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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“… [a] patients medial temporal lobe was severely injured in a motorcycle accident. The patient was asked by his doctor — “do you feel hopeful about the future?” To which he responded “I guess so, I don’t really think much about the future.” That same patient once described thinking about the future as being asked to find a chair in an empty room. The future and the past seem to be somehow linked in the mind. When you let your mind wonder, you switch back and forth all the time, remembering and imagining. Your mind is a time machine.”

- Emma Stone, from “The Mind Explained”

Problems only exist in time⏳

Someone once told me that problems only exist in time. I honestly don’t remember who it was. And at first, I didn’t get it. What does that mean? Problems only exist in time? Sounds meta, definitely not useful.

About a year later, the power went out in my apartment.

“F*ck” I thought. “How am I going to cook dinner?” My mind’s time machine kicked in — “It’s going to be freezing in my apartment tonight. Do I have a flashlight? I can barely see my way over to the closet. The flashlight isn’t in here. What happened to it? I bet I let someone borrow it. People never return things they borrow. I really don’t feel like ordering dinner or going out. Where am I going to go? It’s a weeknight. How long will this last for?”

This unproductive internal debate went on for about thirty minutes. Until it stopped. For some reason, I remembered the quote: “problems only exist in time.” Alas, it hit me. I understood what it meant.

Being in the present.

Losing electricity isn’t a problem in the present moment. It’s not a problem for the electricity, and it’s not a problem for the apartment either. It’s only a problem for Y.O.U. Why? Because you’re human.

Humans create problems in our mind’s time machine. We love problem solving so much that we make up future problems that don’t exist just to solve them. Ray Dalio has a wonderful bit on this in his book Principles — The Life Principles part, section 2.3.

Ok so what, why does this matter?

The event vs. your interpretation.

Humans are not good at distinguishing events that happen in reality from our interpretation of events. Said differently, it is not in our nature to separate the power outage (event in reality) from the meaning we assign to it.

Event: Power outage in my apartment.

Interpretation of event:

Future thoughts —

F*ck, how am I going to cook dinner?

It’s going to be freezing in my apartment!

Where am I going to go?

Past thoughts —

Do I have a flashlight?

What happened to it [flashlight]?

People never return things they borrow.

We say things things to ourselves like they are facts, even though we’re completely making them up based on past occurrences and what may or may not happen in the future.

Now let’s make one thing clear. The above thought process is completely normal. Imagine not having access to past thoughts, or the ability to forecast the future? That would suck. Our mind’s time machine is a superpower many ways. It isn’t the point of this post to argue for or against the time machine. The point is that this distinction — separating events from how they occur to us (interpretations) — is a powerful leadership skill that you can use to stay present and problem solve a lot faster.

As people building companies and working on creative projects, unwanted events happen all the time. The difference between addressing issues powerfully vs. getting bogged down by what may or may not happen, based on what’s already happened in the past, lies in our ability to see events clearly. Focusing on our already existing interpretation of the event clouds the event itself, making the event more challenging to see and far more difficult to deal with. When we remove the fog, a wider range of solutions emerge. We can begin addressing the event itself instead of the story we created about it.

Separating the event from your interpretation 🤯

// Step 1 is to get clear on the event. Events happen in reality. They just are, and they simply have no inherent meaning.

Event: Power outage in my apartment

// Step 2 is to pretend like there is no interpretation.

Interpretation of event: Nothing.

// Step 3 is to create a powerful interpretation instead of letting your mind’s time machine take over and run the show. Create one that moves you toward action.

New, powerful interpretation:

This is an opportunity to go have a long dinner with a friend.

If the power doesn’t come back on tonight, I’m checking out that new hotel.

I’ll get my landlord to reimburse me for the trouble.

Now let’s look at a more serious example in company building.

A real world startup example

Ever wondered how companies get down to the very last of their cash, stressing to raise money in two weeks or firing employees without warning?

Event: $75k in the bank, $25k monthly burn (3 months)

Interpretation of event:

Future thoughts —

We only have three months of cash left!

My investors are going to flip.

What am I going to tell my friends and family?

Past thoughts —

Why hasn’t my sales team delivered?

It’s always worked out in the past.

This is just what happens in startups.

All of these thought patterns are normal. The problem is that none of them are useful or productive in solving a very real cash flow problem.

Creating from Nothing 👩‍🔬

Let’s try this again, creating a new interpretation from nothing.

Event: $75k in the bank, $25k monthly burn (3 months)

Interpretation of event: Nothing.

New, powerful interpretation

$75k can last us six months if we cut our burn to $12.5k.

If we share this with our investors today, they might help.

We can put controls in place so this doesn’t happen again.

Staying in the present.

Meditation coupled with tools like the one above have gone a long way in helping me stay present in building The New Company and helping our clients build too. I’m still working at it and am by no means an expert. Next time an unwanted problem arises in your work, try the above. Don’t get bogged down by the story your mind is already telling you. Take out a notepad and create a new story. Take action and share with us how it goes. You might find the solutions begin to come quicker and more naturally.

Problem Solving From The Present was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We know that vulnerability is the cornerstone of courage building. But what we often fail to realize is that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation. Why? Because there is nothing more uncertain than the creative process. And there is absolutely no innovation without failure. Show me a culture in which vulnerability is framed as weakness, and I’ll show you a culture struggling to come up with fresh ideas and new perspectives.

-Brené Brown, Dare To Lead

To us this says it all: “Show me a culture in which vulnerability is framed as weakness, and I’ll show you a culture struggling to come up with fresh ideas and new perspectives.”

From our direct experience, there is nothing more uncertain than the creative process and there is no innovation without failure. Companies today are building backward. The early-stage ecosystem has developed in a way where young founders are expected to first build something users want, fast, and focus on people, culture, and leadership second. This makes linear sense and we completely understand the high importance of product-market fit. There’s no company without product. The problem is that culture isn’t linear, it’s created everyday. And the number one reason companies fail to become valuable isn’t product-market fit or lack of good ideas — it’s founder and team conflict.

Company culture is what we do everyday at work. Today we’re treating product as step one and culture as step two. That’s simply incorrect. Calling it incorrect sounds bold doesn’t it? Good. Because it’s wrong. Culture cannot be step two, because culture is the way you go about finding customers and building products to solve their problems. For example: if your team views their six month cash runway as life or death, you’re building a fear-based culture. The same way you’re building a culture of rudeness if it’s okay for people to interrupt during meetings, and the same way your company won’t value time if it’s alright for senior people to arrive five minutes late to meetings.

I started The New Company because I don’t believe innovation and culture are at odds. In fact they are one in the same. In order to create the next generation of great organizations where people love working, we have to rethink our definition of innovation. It starts with leadership and taking responsibility for the environments we create.

You don’t need us to recommend one of a thousand books on building a company. Though we might recommend a few along the way, here’s what none of the books will tell you: learning a process — design sprint, AOR, Agile — is not what drives success. We like to think of these processes like the “apps” of your company culture — the places where people communicate. Healthy culture takes building a robust operating system for the apps to plug into. The “OS” of your company are its people — how they show up to work and what they communicate. The real work starts at the source code: why people show up.

Self Awareness Is Innovation was originally published in Huddle Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.