The Full Circle
On the topic we have been avoiding this whole time: the rise and fall of our co-owned company.
In the last episode of this season, we took the dogs to the Buda Hills to have a surprisingly chill conversation about the emotionally loaded subject of our experience with co-ownership, distributed decision-making, and trust.
The path we took:
- A journey back in time to 2015: the pitch to join a co-owned company, and what made us say yes.
- The era of building end-to-end product agency / venture builder hybrids.
- The beanbags and foosball tables of every 2010s office, aka hiring developers before the bootcamp boom.
- The motivational powers, technicalities, and challenges of co-ownership.
- Experiments with flat organizations and distributed decision-making, and the ups and downs of our implementation of holacracy.
- And the downfall: why we left, and what we are taking with us - about PLCs, amazingly productive meetings, and contract-backed trust.
Further reading:
- https://www.lab.coop/
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVNYM4C
- https://www.holacracy.org/
- https://blog.crisp.se/2015/06/07/henrikkniberg/no-i-didnt-invent-the-spotify-model
- https://blog.lab.coop/holacracy-from-scratch-40e1f01e9030
- https://blog.lab.coop/share-more-to-have-more-why-lab-coop-is-an-employee-owned-holacracy-governed-company-c85915ae3168
Ps. We are going on a little summer break now and will be back with our next season in September. We're experimenting with some shorter outtakes and thought-nuggets on Instagram until then. Also, we are all ears - if you want to chime in, have some feedback, or have a topic in mind that you would love to hear about next, hit us up at @paths.puddles.products!
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Creators and Guests
Host
Anikó Vera Fejes
I'm a software developer who tried a lot of things but ultimately decided to hide from the world in the woods.
