The Full Circle

Paths, Puddles, Products

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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