Why start Advisable?
This series covers the inside story of our startup's messy middle. This post is about the background story behind why we started Advisable.
For my first job, I was lucky to help build a pretty successful startup.
And be part of a team that helped the company as a whole become successful!
After 4 years there, I was ready for my next thing - but didn’t know what that should be.
So I decided to try freelancing for a while so I could hone my skills while figuring out what to do next!
Thankfully, because the company I worked at and the stuff I did there was publicly facing, I had a network of people interested in working with me for freelance projects!
I was able to use the skills I learned to help some of these companies!
And often contribute to their success!
While learning, earning good money, travelling, working with cool people AND exploring what I could do long-term!
This got me thinking: why isn't this far more common? Why aren't companies and independent talent collaborating all the time?
Every time I'd meet a talented person who was considering their next step, I'd ask them if they were interested in freelancing & so many of them were!
These were people who were brilliant at what they did & wanted to do impactful work without committing to a full-time job - each of them had their own unique set of skills!
However, they weren't lucky like me to have a big network of people they could collaborate with.
Meaning they were forced to 'get married' prematurely - join a company full-time rather than figuring out how to work independently & pursuing their passion.
There were also so many companies that could use their skills & perspectives.
But there was no way for them to find these people, understand what they did, and work with them.
We started Advisable to enable these skilled, passionate people to collaborate with companies that they could help succeed.
So more people with unique skills & perspectives could share them where they're most needed and valued - without having to commit to a full-time job!
And, in doing so, help more ambitious companies achieve their missions!
A win-win for everyone!
In the next post, I'll be going through our initial approach to tackling this problem, how it 'succeeded' - getting fast growth with customers like Product Hunt, Stack Overflow, & Amazon - but why that success didn’t achieve our initial mission. After that, I’ll be covering the dramatic changes we’re making to fix this and build an experience that delights the best talent!