Aug 20, 2020
Building a magic company
We’re not going to get anywhere by floating with the current.
One definition of madness is to try the same thing twice and expect a different result. At Konf, we’re done with that. We’re tearing up the rulebook and taking a fresh look at how to run a company. We’re re-evaluating how we want to show up in the world.
Damien and I are both organizational nerds (teal organizations, anyone?) with an environmental bent. When building a new kind of organization — when questioning accepted ways of doing things — a ton of new things suddenly become possible.
It’s in those liminal spaces — the gaps between the could-be and the should-be, and betwixt the ‘maybe’ and the ‘wait, what?’ — that true magic is prone to happen. As you might suspect, we don’t have a ‘push here for magic’ button. If we did, we’d be in a different industry. What we do have is the ability to build an organization that is ready to catalyze magic, and harness it when it shows itself. We are collecting a team of humans who know to recognize and amplify magic when they see it. And we attract customers and investors who share that vision — who know that memorable, life-shifting events don’t happen by accident.
As you might expect, the magic doesn’t show up in just one way. It shows up everywhere you turn, in the places you least expect it.
It’s not just lip service. Our company values are deeply embedded into the work we do, and that shows up in every way. Our team is extraordinarily diverse, and we are distributed across three continents and nine time zones. We are taking a stance for the things we care about: We are offering free event hosting for organizations that are working on climate change. Many of us are parents, and we are a family-friendly company. Black lives matter. Diversity matters. Inclusion matters. We’re a team that’s able to inject humor into the serious and extract meaning from the zany.
Above all, Konf is a living organism that changes, adapts, grows, and learns. Humans make mistakes — and we’re building an organization where continuous improvement is a cornerstone of how we do things. We catch the mistakes. We dig into the root causes and we fix them.
And you know what? This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I’m working with an incredible team, working on a fantastic product. And the mission is clear: Every year, 1.5bn people travel by planes, trains, and automobiles to get to real-life events. The main reason that they haven’t taken the leap to virtual equivalents is that something is missing; and we’re here to bring the ‘something’.
Stay tuned. Or better still; join us. Invest, stay up to date with our progress, or host an event of your own. We only have one planet — and this is one way you can help keep it around for just a little bit longer.
