Welcome to Fortnight.
An Austrian and an Italian launch a design studio in England
It feels like an eternity since I last blogged on Medium or since I published anything interesting online. But I was busy; busy with life and work, so busy in fact that I neglected most of the social-facing platforms that I am now feeling new to this thing again. So busy that it felt like time passed by at the speed of light.
I am back, baby.
Re-reading some of my old posts I have realised how many things have changed in the past three years. After some life-changing events, I was very hesitant about trying this “running a studio” thing again for the 3rd time. You see, I am not entirely new at this game, the idea of running my own business was an itch that I’ve always wanted to scratch, no matter how unprepared I was, I was always crazy enough to throw myself head-first into something new.
It all started as a Slack channel
As my then-business partner and I parted ways, I decided it was time to try something new. I went freelancing again and with the FOMO — working from home or coffee shops is not precisely the best way to socialise — I decided to launch a Slack channel with a close group of designers and entrepreneurs.
Here we would chat daily and exchange feedback and ideas, that Slack channel was called **Fortnight**. The concept of the name came from my *fortnightly* payment runs, milestones and a personal challenge to deliver finished jobs to my clients. It worked well.
During my freelancing stint, I received a new job enquiry, what followed would change everything.
The Meet-up
After a few initial conversations with the new client, I made my way to London for the first meeting with Rico, the startup’s project/marketing manager. It was supposed to be a very light-hearted conversation to understand what was and wasn’t working for them and how my designs would help improve some issues their app had.
It started well, but we naturally diverged the conversation into how we could join forces to use our expertise and knowledge for a much stronger collaboration. Rico had worked in the startup scene for quite a few years, and just like me, he was tired of fixing someone else’s problems.
I was hesitant at first because I had less than stellar experiences in the past — let alone partnering up with someone I barely knew, but my gut instinct told me otherwise, and the rest is history.
The struggle with freelancing
I’ve been a designer for about 13 years now, my original focus was games development, but I slowly moved away from that industry and started specialising in mobile UI and UX. While I loved the freedom and revenue freelancing brought me, I began to realise it wasn’t something I would have liked to do for the rest of my life. There are so many things to factor when freelancing that required other skills I didn’t have the time or resources for budgeting, accountancy, marketing, sales and a lot more.
With this in mind, partnering up was the best next step, allowing me to focus on design and marketing (the thing I know how to do best) while leaving the other tasks to people that have a lot more knowledge and experience than I would ever have.
Fortnight Today
Rico and I have been officially going for just over a year; we are incredibly proud of what we managed to achieve together — and with the help of our growing team — in such a short amount of time. Our team has now grown to 12-strong in-house professionals plus a host of other trusted freelancers helping us out daily.
Coming from a freelance background, we have kept a few unique things at the core of our business; we are not a typical design and development studio. Instead, we pride ourselves on being fully remote and flexible with our environment and working hours.
We are also proud to have:
- six nationalities
- four languages spoken
- lived in 10 countries
- three former startup founders
- invested in 3 startups
We also put a significant focus on self-growth and personal expansion, either via courses, tutorials or events. If you don’t learn from your job and take yourself to the next level, then what’s the point of it all?
It’s still very much a learning path for us founders as well, we can teach one thing or two but can also learn a lot from our pro team.
Would you like to be part of that journey? We have a few positions open:
- Marketing Manager
- ASO Manager
- Mid-level iOS Developer. [Full-time] or [Contract]
