It may not be ‘broken’, but it still needs ‘fixing’
Our hardest year ever led to our largest funding round so far, here's what we learned
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Our hardest year ever led to our largest funding round so far. During that process, we gained a heap of knowledge. Here are three lessons we learned along the way. Take a look, and leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
One: “Growing pains” is an understatement
In 2022, our business exploded — in a good way — at least to begin with. We found ourselves working on projects we truly enjoyed and expanded our team to respond to the demand of incoming project requests.
But while we were moving fast which (was great), we were breaking things that we wanted to keep intact. We quickly learned that we had over-hired which led to a round of difficult redundancies. Parting with the incredible people you’ve been working with isn’t easy, and led to our next evolution as leaders too.
Two: “The Rich that existed before, can’t exist anymore”
In the process of writing you this, one of my co-founders, Rich said something that stuck with me. When it came to leadership, “the Rich that existed before, can’t exist anymore”. The growing pains didn’t only lead to reinventing our business (see point three), we took a long view on what it means to truly embody leadership.
Be more present.
Be more malleable.
Be more to more people.
Be more emotional.
Lesson learned: your business can only mature to the extent that you’re evolving personally. It was time to translate the human-centric thinking we live by in our client projects to our internal operations, and that meant becoming ‘version 2.0’ of ourselves as people.
Three: It may not be ‘broken’, but it still needs ‘fixing’
Do you see a theme developing here? I think it's reinvention. Creating things for the future with the next billion use cases in mind requires that we challenge and reimagine what ‘works’ today.
The same goes for what kind of studio we’re trying to be. For us, success as a studio isn’t in doing things the way they’ve always been done, or in spreadsheets and reports, it’s in finding the best way to articulate and define intangible concepts. It’s okay for us to deviate from the norm if there are more interesting, higher impact yet under-explored options. As a result, you’ll see more prototyping, documentaries and experimental formats from us over what’s already been done.
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Speak soon
Akil, Rich and Lex
COMUZI Co-founders