Departure
“It’s better to keep moving” #
I closed the company’s office HQ at the end of last month. I’ve been mobile since then and plan to continue until at least January. It’s an odd feeling, but I can’t say I haven’t been here before. I spent years as an independent contractor doing odd jobs before I fell into working at the startup that would be the predecessor to this one.
There was no party to celebrate, no blowout like the last company’s closure, and I really won’t miss the office itself but I feel it was pivotal for me and the company. You can’t fully understand the experience unless you lived through it.
It was time. Growth stalled in 2015 and while we recovered momentum in 2016, too much had changed. I take the majority of the responsibility for my lack of leadership at the time while I was out founding a second company. To make things work I had to focus on cutting overhead and pivoting services to more profitable services, it’s really as simple as that.
Our Origin #
Uber Motif was carved out of a failure back in 2012. It’s internal purpose was to provide a living for the members of a failing mobile app startup by combining the skillsets we used in branding and advertising. Initially, it was conceived as a side gig and intended to be temporary until the app startup got traction, it ultimately became our livelihood.
Our first weekly board meetings were held in a cafe across the street from where our HQ would be established. Eventually we realized they really didn’t have the space so we ended up across the street at another cafe that had a large table. This was where our future landlord approached us and gave us a really good offer to move into the building. From February 2013 to December 2016 this was our HQ.
We began with a 5 person team and eventually settled into a partnership between Andrew and I, all the while focusing on core website development. For the future, I intend to continue to oversee website development but I feel this is market that I’ll either be forced to go upscale or limit the number of projects I take as I move into other services.
Moving Forward #
There will be a rebrand. The name doesn’t suit the company anymore now that Uber has won mindshare. It also never really suited my background or how I work. I’d like to incorporate elements of our branding in with the new branding but we’ll see where it goes. Solving problems will be the theme.
I have begun to soft-launch two marketing products I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. There’s also a software development project we completed for a client that’s interested in reselling the software either packaged or as a service that I intend to ramp of development on in January.
The company blog will get updated. For now, this personal blog will see a little more activity. I am maintaining a presence in Clinton and things aren’t changing for our existing clients except the availability of our new services which will be announced next month in company blog posts. Looking forward to 2017.