Founding a digital agency during the Corona crisis
After we have already reported why we founded mutoco, here is the second article about our agency’s development. Hi, I am Lena. Exactly 60 days have passed since our start at the beginning of September, and I have to say: time flies! Let me tell you what has been going on in the past weeks and months.
We decided to found the company in spring. Yes, right in the middle of the Corona lockdown. Therefore mutoco was created remotely via slack calls and Miro boards. We hesitated for a moment and questioned whether this was the right time to start a company. But we quickly agreed that Corona had made our industry even more significant than ever. Old habitual patterns were disrupted, remote meetings became commonplace and online shopping has become the norm — even for the older generation. And now, we are looking into the near future, where many processes and procedures will be digitalized and automated.
For sure, the fact that we have been working together for several years as a team is a major advantage. However, launching a company means changing structures: before we were organized hierarchically, now we are all equal and we are striving towards Sociocracy 3.0. In my opinion, this transition has been very smooth, which is probably due to the fact that we all sympathized with such models beforehand and that hierarchy levels were of little importance to us.
The foundation of our stock company at the notary’s office went quite okay — apart from the fact that one of us missed this critical appointment. But hey, it was Monday morning — it can happen that you are not quite awake yet. Despite these circumstances, Domenig&Partner helped us in a professional and uncomplicated way to lay the foundation of mutoco. Kudos for giving us excellent legal advice!
Despite having a regular home office, we also wanted office space where we could work together face to face. We came across the perfect solution: a place for temporary interim use. The building will be ultimately demolished in 2022 and offers us ideal conditions for getting this off the ground because we share it with other creatives and start-ups.
And of course, there was some bureaucracy involved in this initial phase — banking, insurances and all the other boring stuff. In this respect, it was important for us to consider sustainable companies as partners. That’s why we chose Abendrot pension fund for example.
Alongside our website and branding, we are currently working on a distinct and differentiated strategy and vision. In addition to digital products, we also want to invest in up-and-coming and future-oriented ideas — more information on this in a following article.
This is just a first small insight. There were dozens of other topics that kept us busy, and we’ll go into some of them in more detail in upcoming blog posts.
See you soon and take care
