Mindaugas Petrutis - How to become a design expert without having a design degree.

I, uh, don't pretend that I know everything. If I lead with curiosity and vulnerability,

right,

and ask questions, show that I genuinely want to learn about what does a designer do on a day-to-day basis, it will open a lot of doors for me. So that moment taught me so much about how I then approached, uh, building, you know, uh, myself up as a design recruiter and then just building the community in general.

Right. How is everyone doing? I'm your host, Sharath, and you've tuned to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. Today, I'm excited to talk to the CEO of Coho. Coho is a highly curated membership network community for leaders in growth, tech, and chief of staff. It's a big community. I love— I personally love And the CEO of Cohost is Mundagas. Welcome to the show. How are you, man?

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. And I love how we made this happen within, within the community. And now we're here.

Right. And that's a fun story I want to narrate, like, before we dive in. Like, I'm part of the Cohost community. And I just took a shot asking the community, like, anybody who's interested in hopping on the podcast and the man himself, the CEO, he hopped on and like, that's the serendipity of having a group of like-minded folks coming together, right? So I love that. Yeah. Before we dive into the episode, I want to just give a brief introduction about Mindaugas. He previously led— he did many things, first of all. So if you go to his LinkedIn, he has a history of doing multiple things in a great way. But on a highlight, He led design fellowship at On Deck and he was also the head of design community at InVision. And he's a design genius, I guess. So let's dive into his mind and unpack how he thinks about community and how he landed where he is right now. So yeah, Mindaga is excited, man. And right off the bat, I want to like cover or start your early days. When did you get into tech? What was like your first impressions? How did you, you know, find design as an element in yourself? Like, what was the background?

Yeah, I mean, so I only got like really technically into tech, I would say 2017 only, when I joined InVision. Right? That was like a tech company that I joined. I wouldn't call that we were a startup at the time. We were like 400 and something people when I joined. But previously to that, I mean, I lived a completely different life. I was very removed from all things tech. I worked in the hospitality industry for many years, but even kind of going back to say when I was in school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just, did not enjoy the constraints of school, I remember. And I went to university for like a year. I was kind of, my grandparents pushed me to do business. I think it was like business administration or something. And I did a year and—

We all been there. Like we all been pushed by our parents or grandparents to do some things which we don't even care right now, right? So it's funny you mentioned that.

I just remember being like, no, this is not for me for many different reasons. And I actually ended up escaping that environment and I moved to— so, I'm from a small country in Eastern Europe, Lithuania. Like, I was, you know, I'm 40 now. So, I was born in very— in Soviet Union at the time, actually. Mm-hmm. So, opportunities were limited and I had known that I wanted to live live abroad ever since I was like 12.

Right.

I remember my grandfather took me on like a trip abroad. I think it was the UK, right? When I was 12 years old or something. And it just captivated me immediately. And I knew from that age that I, for some reason, even at 12, I decided I don't, I wanna live abroad. That's when I can, right? So that was just always in the back of my mind. And I ended up when I was 19 or 20, moving to Ireland to a city called Galway. And Just started from scratch. I basically got a job in, in like a fast food. It was like the Irish version of McDonald's, let's say.

Nice.

And just worked there and just kind of bounced around that for quite a while. Then I ended up moving to the Canary Islands on a small island off the coast of North Africa. And I spent about 8 years there just working in hospitality. Started working in bars and nightclubs, then discovered restaurants, fell in love with that industry. And just the I think the the immediate boost that you get when you deliver a great service to somebody, I just something that spoke to me. And so my dream was to open my own restaurant. I dabbled with that a little bit. I kind of had a kitchen for a few months that I started with like. basically no money, and that wasn't never going to be sustainable. But it was a great little test,

right,

in, in seeing whether, you know, what was in my head actually— does it translate to people becoming customers and enjoying, you know, what I have to offer? Right. And, and so that, even though it lasted only 3 months, and I knew it wouldn't, you know, I, I wouldn't make it into a thing because I just started with with zero resources, it kind of gave me the confidence that like, hey, I'm not crazy, right? What's in my head, I was able to translate to something that actually worked technically. Right. So, yeah, that was my dream. And I ended up moving to Dublin, I think in 2012, because what I'd realized that I will likely never, have enough money to open a restaurant while working in one. That was my way of line of thinking. And so, I was like, okay, let me go somewhere where there are maybe more opportunities and I'll start a company. I had no idea what that company was, but in my head at the time was like, starting a company will get me the money to somehow then open a restaurant, right? That was the way of thinking. Right. And so, I moved there in 2012. Worked a little bit back in a hotel, in hospitality, until I went into sales, what I had previously done a little bit, and recruitment. And so that's where I discovered design, was when I was working as a recruiter. Mm-hmm. I was kind of hiring engineers, business analysts, but never really was able to connect with those folks. Like, I'm very— I tend to be quite curious and I want to start understanding, like, what do you do on your day-to-day? But an engineer couldn't necessarily show me, you know, what they do. Right. And I happened to be asked to help recruit a couple of design positions. And I just, like, I always say it the same way. It's one of those moments that's etched into my brain. I opened somebody's portfolio and It just straight away, something just happened where I was like, you know, I was amazed that there was people, and I didn't know this, working behind the scenes of products that we know and love, kind of making all these decisions on how we interact, how the products look, how they feel. And I was just captivated from that moment. Hmm. And then, yeah, ended up becoming a design recruiter, starting kind of my own small little firm because I just kind of wanted, the company I worked for wasn't really seeing the design as being a viable business line, let's say, like engineers were their bread and butter. Right. But I would say that when I think back, even when I was, in my early 20s. I'm quite introverted, but somehow I always end up knowing a lot of people and connecting the dots. And I remember years ago, like 20 years ago, I would, you know, be in a group of people and somebody will mention like, hey, I have this problem. Mm. I'll go, ooh, I know somebody that can help you. Let me make an introduction. And even back then I used to think, Imagine if that was a job one day, right? Is that— is that— could that be a job, right? And that was like 20 years to say now,

wow,

actually running a company that we build community, right? That's what we do, connect people. At the time seemed like completely unimaginable. Um, so it was kind of cool to like reflect and say, well, you know what, like 20 years— it took 20 years to kind of make it a reality.

Yeah, absolutely. That's— first of all, I'm very fascinated by the fact that there are like so many twists and turns in your story, right? You're not like a— it's not a linear—

Oh yeah, this is, this is just a snippet. There's many more.

Yeah, excited to dive in. But you, you— couple, couple of things I want to I want to dive deeper into your mindset. One of the things you mentioned in your answer, you said you came from Soviet Union at that time, right?

Yeah.

And I think I can only imagine because I was not there. I can only envision or kind of paint a picture how that can be. And most of the people who are back then, like, take Gary Vee, he was part of Soviet Union before he moved to the US, right? His mom the classic examples. And he always mentions the struggle and the lack of hope in that time.

Right.

And you also said that there were no opportunities in the place you lived. What was your mindset back then? Like your parents or— because reflecting back after 20 years or 30 years, you were in a completely different area or different country and different everything, right? The life got so much better. So did you ever thought this will happen back then? It's like how Steve says, connecting the dots backwards, or what was your thought process?

Yeah, so I actually was very lucky because My, and there's some, like, this is a crazy story that, so my grandfather is, you know, like 80-something now. And I know he's lived, like, so they say my grandparents grew up in, you know, experienced the war in the '40s. Mm-hmm. And they grew up under a very different Soviet Union that I was born into, right? I was born in '82. we became independent in '91. And so, and also we as a nation kind of really rebelled against, so we didn't accept any of the things that were being pushed on us. Right. But my grandfather recently, a couple of years back, he came to visit me and he started telling me all these stories about his life, what it was like living in the '50s and '60s in Soviet Union. And so, everything was highly controlled by KGB.

Right.

And so, him and my grandmother lived in the capital. They both graduated. They were incredibly smart. He was some like engineer. She was an architect. And so, they were building in those circumstances a pretty good life for themselves, what was kind of allowed, right, amongst that system at the time. But one day he came into work and he was told by his boss like, hey, KGB are waiting for you in the meeting room. And what happened there is why I'm saying that it translated to me being one of the more lucky ones, because what they told him was, you need to pack up your life. You're gonna forget everything you know here and you're gonna move to this small little town of 20,000 people. Wow. 1,000 people, and you're going to be in charge of this artificial leather factory. And so, he became the director of this factory, which comes with a much different— now, that wasn't a choice, right? You're being told that this is what you're going to do. And I wouldn't want to even contemplate what the other option is. But what that meant is he was in a very kind of high position, comes with a different But what that factory was, was actually on normal days, they were building, making artificial leather that they were distributing all over the world. But it was also one of those factories that if the war comes or Soviet Union becomes under attack, they switch it to produce military equipment. Whoa. So, he, yeah, so he was like, had to, there was the safe that he was telling me about that only he had access to that had all the instructions, like, If they get the call from Moscow basically saying, we're under attack, you need to switch production to, you know, whatever military stuff, he goes in and instructs everybody how to do that. So, tying it back to kind of what I was saying, like, I grew up much more well-off than most people.

Right.

So, I had a lot of opportunities technically for me even at that time, but I don't know why I just kind of rebelled against things and I just decided to move to Ireland, to some city and just work in like McDonald's basically, right? But there was some other kind of family stuff that made me do it, but I've known that, you know, I wanted to go do my own thing. Right. So yeah, my kind of, in those early days, I only remember the better things, you know, and yeah.

That's amazing. I just got goosebumps when you explained like, it was, he was told there's no option, right? That's insane. That's like, damn, you know, we live in a very different world. We have We have more empowerment, we have choices to make, and still people screw up. That's a different thing. But this world is completely different than the world you just described. That was— shout out to him. He survived and he kind of passed on his wisdom to you. So I can only imagine the struggles they went through. Man, that's a very deep story right there. Thanks for sharing.

Of course.

So you started your own design agency. That's what you said after like—

Design recruitment agency, yeah.

Recruitment agency. And you have no prior experience as a designer, right? Like— Nothing.

Zero.

Zero. So I love those underdog stories because there is so much intentionality behind them, right? You are not, What do you— how do I put this? Like, you're not well equipped in terms of theory or knowledge, but it's all like battle-tested. You just like get into the field, you know, make your hands dirty type of a thing, and then learn and then implement, then grow. That's, that's, that's what I want to cover. Like, what was like during that time? Because do you have— do you had ever encountered like self-doubt? The meaning, I'm into like hospitality. I did XYZ things before. Design is— design should come naturally, intuitively, which is more of like a, like a skill, right? So what was your— in your mind, what was like the battle? Like, am I, am I able to fit? Or I just try? What was like that? What was your thought process?

Yeah, great question. So I, luckily I had kind of like a slap in the face situation very early in my design recruitment career, let's say, which was— Right. A colleague of mine, so I worked at this agency first, A colleague of mine had the design desk and she was leaving and I was gonna, I wanted to take it over, right? And so she was kind of handing off all her clients to me. And then one day she was like, hey, I have this list of basically folks in the design community that you should absolutely build relationships with because they'll help you open doors. You know, they're great designers. Right. Blah, blah, blah. And so if you picture this kind of situation, and you couldn't make this up, I mean, she said, okay, we're gonna go into this meeting and I'm gonna walk you through all of these folks and give you some context. And just before that, I tweeted out a really terrible ad basically for like saying, hiring rockstar designers. And it was like a really bad visual, blah, blah, blah. And so tweeted that out, went into a meeting with her. She's going through the list, she mentions a bunch of people, and then she mentions this guy called Owen. And I go back, I check my phone, and who picked up my tweet and absolutely tore it to shreds is this guy called Owen that she just told me I should build a relationship with and that he's super connected in the design community. community. And so immediately I was like, he was like, when will these recruiters ever get it? Like, this is not how you try and attract, you know, design candidates. And I was just like, my heart just sank because honestly I felt like, well, I'm done. Like, I haven't even started yet, right? If this guy is so connected and he just called me out publicly. And what I did in that moment is I think what kind of defined and everything that I've done so far, which is I found his number in the database and I called him.

Hmm.

And he picked up the phone. There was like a long pause and 'cause I introduced myself and he just started out laughing. He was like, dude, I can't believe you called me. And I'm like, well, what was I supposed to do? I want to, so you called me out, right? For doing something that doesn't appeal to that audience. How do I do it the right way? And so we ended up having a great chat and he kind of gave me some pointers. And what that showed me was that if I don't pretend that I know everything, if I lead with curiosity and vulnerability,

Right.

and ask questions, show that I genuinely want to learn about what does a designer do on a day-to-day basis, it will open a lot of doors for me. And so that moment taught me so much about how I then approached building, you know, myself up as a design recruiter and then just building the community in general. Right. And then I used that, you know, in various different ways where I went to like a UX sketch club and I— and nobody knew that I was a recruiter. Everybody assumed that I was a designer and I sketched with them, I presented, And only then afterwards, people were like, oh, so, you know, which company do you work for? Assuming as a designer. And I was like, no, I'm a recruiter. And people were genuinely, you know, taken aback because they were like, wait, what? You sat here, you sketched with us, you're really trying to learn about what we do. And that just buys you a ton of goodwill within the community and builds those relationships.

Well, there are so many amazing things you just mentioned. One is, so you're not— you don't have the fear of failure in a way, right? Like you've publicly failed, which is, which is, I feel like most, most people, they guess they just stopped by that, right? Then they can't overpass it. And damn, like you just called the guy who called you out. That took that That should have, like, you know, that took guts to, like, do that. So kudos. And when you called and you, of course, it would be like an awkward conversation, right? Like, it was not like a straightforward thing. How relieved you were that you made that call? Like, what was like the—

Incredibly, because honestly, I think if I didn't make this call, I don't know if we would, if you and I would be talking right now because it just, that one moment, it honestly just opened up so many different doors and opportunities because the other option, like in my, I remember that moment very clearly because I remember thinking, damn, I'm done. And I think that fear and anxiety would've really negatively impacted if I hadn't called him, how I approached. I would've just become a basic recruiter who was just getting by. I'll probably have, would've just said, you know what, maybe design isn't for me. I'll just continue doing software engineering, whatever else I was doing. Right. You know, just random roles. I think it would've really impacted, shifted my thinking in a negative way. And then that would mean, I would have taken a very different path.

Right. The fear of you giving up is much larger than the fear of you facing him, right?

Yeah, that's— yeah.

So essentially, I think it actually worked out. I feel like that's how I think people should look up to— like, it's like, you know, it's like you have to like have the the greatest fear, and all the other things will be like, you know, minute. And wow, appreciate that, you know. And I think you've also started learning about design, which is developing skin in the game, because that's really important, right? Like, without skin in the game, you're just talking surface, you're just talking on layers. Yes. You can't go deeper, you can't dive into their minds and empathize with them. That's That's why. And how hard was for you to like go through the whole process of learning and you designing yourself and like, you know, what was it like?

I mean, from, from again, that, that point, I just started feeling I had like a very different approach to everything that I did. It just gave me this agency and told me that like, hey, if I'm just open, honest, curious, most people are going to replicate that back to me.

Right.

And so, yeah, then it was just, I started kind of building a community around me because what that enabled me to do is at the time, and I mean, that still happens, right? Recruitment industry, there's some good, there's some bad. But I remember at the time hearing a lot that especially designers calling out recruiters and saying like, you know, they just, they're just reaching out to us with like surface level, they don't opportunities, they don't really match the, my profile to the role. They're just like, it's just like this blast. What I was able to do because I started learning the different nuances of designers and what they do, I could curate the opportunities much better. So when I reached out to folks, it was much more curated and relevant for them. So guess what? I started getting responses and then building up a name that like, hey, if you're looking for something new, you go to that guy. Mm-hmm. 'Cause he's gonna, he knows what he's talking about, right? And he's able to match you better to, to companies. Like, one of my proudest things is by doing that, I still have folks. I've been out of the recruitment game, what, since 2017?

Oh, that's a—

I still have folks who are working in the companies I placed them in.

Nice.

And in this environment where people are moving every 18 months, 24 months, People are there 5, 6 years.

Wow.

And I'm super proud of that one because it took, you know, a lot of work in order to get there. But the understanding and challenging yourself to challenge the clients and the candidates to ensure that there's a better match is, so again, you know, just being able to be, being able to be a, allowed into the designer's brain and how they think and being able to pick up certain nuances, then just improved how I approached my job.

Very cool, man. Like, that's a great, you know, great lessons right there. Let's talk about InVision. So you did the whole thing, you learned how to design, you started your recruitment agency, you learned from the guy who called you after. How did InVision happen? Because InVision, I guess, is such a big brand, right? Like, it's not like, you know, easy to get in, especially given— so I am a no-code maker. I've built products myself. I have like no prior experience of anything I do right now. So we both, I think, come from the same line of cloth, which is we tend to do things that we are not trained for, uh, and we expertise a few things. So how did you get in, uh, into InVision? What, what, what is something that, uh, that happened right there, if you want to narrate that story?

Yeah, that was actually, um, pretty cool because, um, I— so when I had my, uh, design recruitment agency, I— when I set it up just when I had like an email address, right? I just started the business. I immediately got intros to amazing candidates and amazing potential clients from the community. They wanted to support me going out and doing this on my own, right?

Right.

And so after the first year, I heard that InVision was releasing this documentary about design. And they were doing all these premieres around the world. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, you know what'd be super cool? I'd love to like say thanks to the Dublin design community in some way. And in my head, I was just like, ooh, this is a crazy idea. Wouldn't it be cool to rent out a small cinema? Even though I had no money, like I was making no money at the time at all. But just my brain sometimes comes up with with the most random things.

Right.

And I was like, yeah, wouldn't it be so cool to rent out a small cinema? And I remember I quickly did a search and I actually found there was a really cool venue that you could rent for, honestly, it was like $600 or something. And it was an amazing venue. And so then I was like, wait, it's potentially possible. So then I reached out to a couple of folks in the design community and I said, hey, does anybody know anyone at Envision? And I ended up getting an introduction to Claire, who was at the time their VP of marketing, I think.

Hmm.

And I just said to her, hey, I'd love to like do the Irish premiere of this film. And she was like, sure, if you— I think if you get like a certain amount of people attending, we'll hook you up, we'll send you the movie, we'll even send you like maybe a couple of our team to do like a panel afterwards.

And

I was like, Let's go, let's do this. So, I ended up organizing this whole event. I think there was 150 people that attended. Wow. It was like a 1-year in. It was a beautiful venue. I had to get up on stage and conquer my fear of public speaking and kind of say thanks. I think I had like 4 gin and tonics before going on stage to calm the nerves. I used to have this crippling fear of public speaking for most of my life. So, that was like a really tough moment. I was the guy doing this, so I couldn't hand it off to anybody. But it was really cool, right? And so, through that process, I ended up meeting a bunch of different people at Envision. Hmm. And one thing that I kept thinking about, I was like, wow, everybody's so nice at this company because even to the most serious senior people, they would say, do the thing that we were talking about. And then their follow-up would be like, how else can I help you? And everybody was the same. And that like really stuck out to me. So when I hosted the premiere, I then sent a cold DM to Clark, the CEO, on LinkedIn. And I said, hey Clark, I hosted this thing. You know, your team is amazing. Thanks for allowing me to do this. Would love to do something again in the future. And maybe like 2 months later, I get a reply back and he's like, so sorry for the late reply. I heard about your event. It was so awesome. Heard it was like really cool. If you wanna do anything else, Let me know. And so, I was like, okay. And so, at the time, right, I'm building my own business. Yeah. Then a few months later, I was exploring like a product idea 'cause I was an agency, like a service business at the time. But I started exploring a product idea and I was like, you know, and I was sending it, I'll always send it to a bunch of people that I know or I don't know for some feedback. And I just emailed Clark, the CEO of InVision. I was like, hey, I'm building this thing. Would love to, you know, see if this is relevant. And got a reply, I think within 2 minutes, introducing me to Steven, who was the, I think he was the VP of design at the time. And he was like, this looks really cool. You and Steven should chat.

Hmm.

And so me and Steven chatted, We kind of built up a relationship. And then a few months later, I realized that, you know what, like my time was up because I was not making this into a viable business and I should really like shut this down and go back to work. And so by that time, I then kind of thought about what do I want to do, right? Mm-hmm. And I really wanted to continue building design communities because I'd built up this network already. Like I'd spent, what, 3 years at that time, and I really enjoyed it. And so I just emailed Clark and Steven, and I just very transparently, and I said, hey, like, I made a go of this business, it's not happening. I'm going back out, you know, to work full-time. I'd love to do, continue building design communities. What do you think? Again, very quickly get a reply back saying, hey, we're actually building a team in Europe. You should chat to this guy called Ryan, who was at the time VP of EMEA. He was building out their like sales team. Chatted with Ryan and they were like, you know what? We don't have a community role, but we think you could do customer success. Hmm. were hiring for that role. And honestly, I had to Google what customer success was when they were telling me. Right. And I saw like, well, requirements usually, customer success people need to know how to use all these tools like Salesforce. And I was like,

I don't

know. Yeah. I never used this.

But

connecting all of my experience previously, sales and customer service and all of this, what that, reading the job description, I was like, I'm pretty sure I can do this.

Right.

And so then I threw my hat in the ring and I went into like the, the proper interview process.

And

I ended up getting the job. And, but my goal was that I will use that as a foot in the door, in the door, because that's not building communities, right? Right. But I'm now entering a company that has those opportunities. And so my goal was to start with customer success and then try and find opportunities within Envision very quickly to move into different roles. And that's what I did.

Right. I love that so much because I think even I can relate to that. You don't usually get what you want right away, but if you have patience enough to play the long game and you're okay to do a bunch of things in between, you'll definitely get like, reach where you want to reach. I think that's an underrated lesson right there. I feel a lot many people should implement. Love that. What are some— if I ask you like 5 things that you did at Envision that makes you proud, what are those things?

Oh, I think one is just continuing with my plan and being— but being very open and transparent about what I wanted to do from the interview process, right? So at some point, I was introduced to the person who would be my manager if I got the job, right? And I told him, and we're still friends to this day, neither of us is at Emission, but I told him, I was like, hey, like, I know I can do this job. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be amazing at it.

Hmm.

But here's what I really want to do, and I would love to be exploring opportunities as quickly as possible. And he was like, look, as long as you hit your targets, I'll help you because I can see, he's like, I can see what you're made for and what you should be doing and like the passion that you have. So he's like, I'll help you do it. And so that was, I think, number one, just being, It was scary because I could have wasted that opportunity and I really needed it at the time because I was broke as hell. And, and this was, you know, my foot in the door with an amazing company. And so being open and honest in that kind of a way could have— they could have said, you know what, this guy's going to be in the job 3 months and then he's going to be out and we're building the team. So I think that was number one because then that allowed, gave me the agency and the freedom, obviously, while still making sure I'm doing my job, to find my corner. And so I think then the second thing was, as soon as I got in, I understood my environment, I got comfortable with the role that I was doing, I made sure that I was, you know, hitting those targets, I was doing a good job. And then I set about building relationships within the company because I knew that most likely there won't just be a posting, a job posting that comes up. I'll have to kind of force them to create the job for me, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. And so that's what I ended up doing was just finding, like, just digging and digging for it and digging for it for about a year and a half, I think. And then they hired Anna, who became my manager, who was kind of heading up the EMEA marketing. And through, because everybody in the company or the relevant people already knew that like, hey, this is what this guy wants to do, they created a role for me to work under her to essentially take on building out the leadership community in Europe.

Nice.

And so that was another thing I'm definitely proud of because had I just sat and waited, that would've never happened.

Right.

And then just building out the kind of leadership community in Europe, which I did through creating these series of highly curated dinners. So we would essentially pick a city, look at the design community there, and essentially curate, organize a dinner.

Nice.

Bring some of our team, alongside these leaders that we wanted to invite and have this like facilitated dinner where people make new connections and also hopefully, you know, learn something. And we're kind of providing a different layer of value to our customers or potential customers.

Nice.

And so through that, just also expanded my own network too, because guess what? I was the one organizing and facilitating it.

How many gin and tonics you had?

Man, yeah. I mean, I couldn't because, you know, I was— but of course, there's always some good wine with the dinner for sure.

No,

I'm just kidding. Small group facilitations and that kind of stuff I love, right? That's my job, right? Just talking in front of like large crowds, it's just crippling anxiety. I'm much better now. But honestly, for about 20 years of my life, I would nearly like just go blank. And I remember doing like, I was invited years ago in Dublin to some startup event and they were like, you can talk for 10 minutes.

Hmm.

I was so crippled with anxiety. I do not remember what I said. All I remember is it was my turn. And I was just surrounded by a lot of people. And I just remember that being the last image. And then I just kind of woke up and they were like, yeah, you're done now. I have no idea what I talked about.

I love that. You're so authentic. You know, I love, I love people like you because you just don't, you know, shadow yourself, like you don't hide yourself.

No more. No more. This is why I love the 40s. I'm like, there's just true clarity and everything that you've done over the course of your life all of a sudden makes so much sense. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. So yeah,

I like that.

40 is great.

I like that. So is that when you're hosting these dinners, is that how you came across On Deck? What was like the whole transition from Envision to On Deck?

Great question. So what I think above anything else, working, so building the, you know, design communities or that network in Dublin, then working for Envision, what I found myself getting out of it is I had the unique privilege of talking to designers of all levels from any company you can imagine from every corner of the world. And what I'm good at is picking out just naturally themes and trends from talking to a lot of people. I start picking up patterns. So I'm like, wait a minute, this group of people are saying all a very similar thing. And so what I picked up was that there's a lot of resources, like, okay, entering the design industry as, say, an early designer is hard, right? There's not many opportunities, but there are a lot of resources. There's YouTube videos, there's bootcamps, there's courses of all kinds of price levels. You're just surrounded by a lot of resources. The opportunities is a different conversation and problem. What I found, and then your role as like a junior to let's say mid-ish, just after level designer, is pretty straightforward, right? You're focused on your craft and that's pretty much it. What I found very peculiar was that when you get to senior lead manager level, Often their job becomes all of a sudden more complex. They don't teach you those complexities in school, in design school, if you're lucky to go to one. The career paths become a lot more ambiguous and the resources just start drying up. And so what I found is this group of folks that were basically saying, I'm lost. And that I found really interesting. And so I remember way before I discovered On Deck, maybe like a year before, I had this idea in my head. I was like, you know what would be amazing? Taking a group of these folks, essentially, in my head, I had the On Deck model before I knew what On Deck was, except for like 8 weeks. For me, it was like, I think over 4 or 5 days. And I was like, imagine if you could take— a group of these folks and curate an experience for them over like a few days where we just dive into all of these different topics with, we'll bring, you know, some amazing folks, you curate a group of peers, they'll share knowledge with each other. And so I tried to like run the numbers on how much something like that would cost to, and then I quickly dropped it because I was like, I don't have the money to do this. But so that idea was very well formed in my head. And so as I started to explore new opportunities, I remember seeing On Deck just start popping up in my Twitter feed. And I clicked on their website and immediately, of course, I loved the concept.

Right, yeah.

'Cause it was already like, I had created it in my head and I was like, whoa, this is— Perfect.

Someone hacked your mind.

Right? And so I just, I looked if they were hiring. They had a generic program director application at the time. They weren't like yet hiring for specific fellowships. And I remember applying and I wrote in the application saying, if you are not thinking about building a design fellowship, you should, and I'm the person to build it. And me being me, uh, I never just, just apply for jobs. I then quickly looked at who works there, and, uh, I found, um, Erica, um, and just DM'd her, uh, on LinkedIn cold. And I was like, hey, uh, super curious about what you guys are building, you know, if you'd be open to maybe, uh, sharing more, I'd love to chat. And she was like, yes, let's jump on a call. At the time, she didn't know I had applied for a role. We were potentially exploring like doing some type of a co-event with the InVision community that I was running at the time. Right.

You were still at InVision or you're—

Yeah, I was still at InVision.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I was running a, helping run the Design Leadership Forum community and we were thinking about maybe doing like a co-event. And then after a while, I was just like, hey, by the way, I applied to the program director role. And she was like, oh my God, you actually would be perfect to build a design fellowship and introduced me to Eric. And then Eric and I got on a call, I think it was supposed to be 30 minutes and we hit like the 20-minute mark and he goes, hey, do you have an extra 30 minutes? And I was like, ooh, this is a good sign. So— Right. Yeah, so that's how I ended up joining, joining Andreessen Horowitz.

Awesome. Yeah, you know, Andreessen's great. They did like so much awesome stuff in terms of community and bringing people together. How was like your experience leading the whole fellowship? How do you describe, and what are some tips if you want to give away for people who are like designing their own courses or fellowships or cohort-based, you know, business?

Yeah. So, man, it was, you know, I'd never built anything like that before. I had the idea, obviously, a similar kind of model of it. So, what I remember being good was the fact that I walked into On Deck already knowing and having a bunch of the components needed to build this fellowship.

Nice. Yeah.

Right. I'd been collecting the insights from the community that I was about to build something for, for years.

Right, right.

And that kind of gave me the confidence that, you know what, this is needed. 2, had the network to kind of build out the initial speakers and bring in the initial kind of group of the, like, the founding fellows that we used to call them. But I do remember an insane amount of imposter syndrome just being very overwhelming. Like, as soon as I accepted the job and joined, I just remember going, what have you done? Now you have to, because, you know, now it becomes a, when you build communities, you're more like, I prefer to be more behind the scenes, right? I'm just like the connector, connect the dots, help the people find each other or whatever.

Right.

Help build, cultivate those relationships. Now it's like you're the face of this thing that you're building for these amazing designers and you're gonna tell them, you're gonna give them a great thing that they're gonna pay for. Respect and promising.

And you're kind of like letting them know that, setting the expectation and whatnot. Yeah, I can sense that.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I remember that being like really overwhelming. And so what I did was even though I had been collecting these insights, right? There were still a lot of them were, assumptions because they weren't documented. It's not like I had this data. 10 out of 10 designers said they need this thing. So, I quickly launched a survey based on my assumptions to just start validating, went back out into the community to talk to a ton of people saying like, hey. And also, I always, when I test ideas, I do it in 3 different stages. Hmm. One is I'll immediately just go to like, my closer network, but the people that I know that will be skeptical or critical enough, they're not just gonna say, oh, you're— whatever you're doing is great because they're my friend.

Yeah, right, being nice.

But I know there's like,

right,

I have, I have a group of like close friends or, or, uh, close people in my network that they're snarky and sarcastic and they will tell me that it's crap,

right?

Even though they like me and And I appreciate that. That's the group I go to.

They're honest. Yeah.

Right, they're honest. So I'll always go to them and get like a quick gut check. Okay, they're saying they're not finding any major red flags, maybe contributing some other ideas or something that I haven't thought about. Then I'll go to another group who I loosely know. So for example, maybe we follow each other on Twitter. Maybe that's it, right? And so, I'll go to them and just kind of continue validating and collecting insights. And then the third thing was, when I was feeling confident in what I was about to launch, I then went to, she wrote a book on design management, She was the VP of Design at Facebook a few years back, right? And so I don't know her, it's completely cold outreach, but that was my way of trying to make sure. And she may have not replied, but she did. So I just sent her a DM and I was like, hey, I'm building this thing, would just love to understand if this is, based on your experience, if this is something that's needed. Got a reply super quick saying, this is great and let me introduce you to a couple people who should join the fellowship. And so, going cold to people that I don't know and kind of trying to get some feedback is like my final, it's like the final boss, right?

Yeah.

And so, that kind of then took away a lot of the anxiety or the worry about what I was about to launch. Because there's always that worry, like you're gonna launch something and what if nobody comes?

Yeah.

Right? What if nobody cares?

Right.

And so, of course, I still had that on launch day, but I was a lot more confident in the response that we would receive. And so, just breaking it down in those kind of stages and continuing to validate, for me, was the way to approach this. instead of just coming in with assumptions and just getting lost in the work,

right,

in building this out. So like just continuously validating was the way for me to know that, hey, I'm pretty sure this is gonna be okay.

Yeah, I like the way you actually kind of broke down into pieces. You're not like taking like a big giant step and with assumptions, like you said, right? I feel like hope, people who listen, building courses, you know, they get, they get some inspiration from the whole process you mentioned. Let's, let's switch gears. Let's talk about Coho. What is it about? You know, what was, what was like the story behind it? And what's the journey so has been so far? How are you feeling about Coho and the things you're trying to do next?

Sure. So, I mean, as we talked about, right, we technically incubated Coho at On Deck, right? We had all the pieces, we had the fellowships, we had the team, we had kind of built different variations of the experience. And so, you know, as rightly so, On Deck shifted the focus to just focusing back on founders. Mm-hmm. it was silly of me not to continue building these fellowships and do it separately, right? It's better for everyone. And so, yeah, I mean, for me, I had spent 2 years building the Design Fellowship. I know others in the team had also felt the same, right? Our work wasn't done yet. My initial thought when I joined On Deck to build the Design Fellowship was my like goal behind all of the goals was how do I build this to be a thing that's still around when I'm no longer part of

it? It's like it's sustainable, it runs by itself.

Right?

Right.

Exactly. I'm not the face of it because, you know, at the beginning, if you remove me out of the picture, it's over because I'm holding all the relationships, I'm doing everything, I'm the face, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, that's what I kind of set about. That's how I wanted to do it. And so, when we hit that kind of 1.5-year mark or so, I wanted to continue building these fellowships because we had seen the flashes of brilliance, right? We had seen the impact it can have on people's lives and careers.

Hmm.

And so I didn't wanna just stop doing that. So we ended up spinning out from On Deck as a separate company, rebranded obviously, and we continued to build some of those fellowships as a separate, separate business and team, which has been really cool.

Awesome. Yeah. Any cool initiatives you guys are planning? What are some fellowships you want to maybe like elaborate about that Coho offers?

So, I mean, we're continuing with design, engineering, data science, chief of staff, marketing, sales, and business development. So that's our kind core stack, which you can kind of nearly break it down to like tech and go-to-market. Right. And so these are the ones that we're gonna continue focusing on. And our goal is to, because we rearranged how we operate, each fellowship previously was pretty siloed, right? They had their own team. So now we're one team operating all of these fellowships. Nobody's no longer just the face of a specific fellowship. So for us, a lot of it is around how we operationalize ourselves as a team to deliver consistently a great experience.

Right.

And also, I think, just understanding how people get value out of what we do. Right. And then finding the balance of, not being too loose of an experience where we say everybody's welcome and we have a buffet of things.

Right, right.

But also not being too rigid in how we structure ourselves to then not allow us to address, I mean, how things are moving today. Right. Because if you think about, if we spend a year building curriculums, and March 2023 happens.

Yeah.

All of that is irrelevant, right? I'm actually straight after this, I'm hosting a session called, Is AI Going to Take Our Jobs? And we wanna do, you know, it's like, it's a cheeky headline, but it's important to have these conversations because right now they're happening, you know, lots of hot takes on Twitter, very little substance. And so allowing us to be finding that balance where we have enough evergreen topics that we're covering throughout the year for folks that we know they're going to— they're not— those topics are not going away, right? Specific skills like leadership and all that kind of stuff. But then allowing us to address things that happen all of a sudden or move quickly is our focus now for this year. It's just finding that structure and balance. I like that.

I like the balance because you're kind of, you're being very real. At the same time, you're being also futuristic. Like, okay, if this happens, how do we prepare ourselves? Right. And you prepare the rest of the folks. And I feel Coho can be the place for answers for pretty much like, you know,

that's the

goal. Yeah. I think I really like the mission and the way you guys leading. So Big, big fan of the ecosystem. Appreciate it. That's why. And I'm happy to like do any sessions and, you know, in the future as

well. Yes, let's do it.

Yeah. So let's take the questions that came from the community. Like we got 3 questions. One is from WeCloudr. That's his handle. I don't know his actual real name. He asks, what's the biggest challenge Coho has faced so far and how did you overcome it?

I mean, I don't think we haven't overcome it yet. And what I mean by that is that we, in this process of becoming a separate company, I saw an opportunity to maybe structure the business a little bit very differently than what we maybe know. Mm-hmm. And the reason for that is that I think Community can absolutely be a business, but having, and I'm not saying VC money is bad, it absolutely is necessary for certain types of companies or to get certain things off the ground or reach a specific scale. My personal belief is that at the earlier stages, VC money is not good for a community business.

Mm-hmm.

Hot take, I don't know. But, and so what we ended up doing is structuring ourselves very differently, which is the challenge, which is we're not sitting on a ton of cash. And we also know that it takes like, okay, we were incubating this for 2 years at On Deck, but we've rebranded, we've changed processes. Our marketing has to shift. And so the top of funnel and admissions become spiky again, right? If we had an On Deck, we spent 2 years nailing that. Correct. And then it starts leveling out.

Right.

We just wiped that away. And so the challenge becomes getting to break even.

It's always there. I know, I think, I think you're facing, you're facing the devil in the first step itself, which is you're basically trying to do a litmus test. Is the whatever fellowship, is it really, people are really craving for it or not? Like, that's the question, right? Like, if we, if you had like $10 million sitting in your bank, you would assume that there might be a chance of this fellowship being you know, as a long-term play. And you can spend that money recruiting people. But I think I would— I'm actually very curious about how you go through this journey because I feel you'll know, is this fellowship— is there a business for community or not? It's going to be like really binary, yes or no, right? There is no maybe, you know, in between. So, but yeah.

Yeah,

definitely. You know, let's, let's maybe circle back for another episode of how you overcome this challenge and whatnot.

100%.

So we have a question from Ash. I love Ash, by the way. He's a good friend. He and I, we were part of like many communities, like one of the masterminds we were together. And he's a very good friend. He asks, what's it like living in one of Europe's heart hottest startup hubs, Lisbon, and how has the ecosystem and the living among startup founders in that location influenced you, your vision, and like the, in terms of startups and companies?

You know what I love about Lisbon is it is, I mean, I work remotely, right? That's my jam. I love working from home, but What I love about Lisbon, there's a, I don't know about like the true local ecosystem, right? I'm not kind of very ingrained in that. What I do find, there's a lot of, I ended up meeting, just bumping into like amazing people that are either living here, from here, or passing by, or here for some event. Lisbon has become this, city where there's always incredible folks that are coming through and are in town. And so what I always make time for is taking any intro that comes my way and grabbing that coffee and just soaking up, you know, the knowledge from folks. So it's a, I think it's a much different kind of hub than SF or London. There's a different kind of style, which I love. This is why I live here. But there's always these really cool people that are just dropping by or just moving here. Like for example, my gym is a really cool space that's founded by this really interesting entrepreneur from New York. So I spend a lot of time with him. We've become friends and I learn he's nothing to do with tech, but you know, are actually— his gym is a very similar model to Coho. It's community and membership based.

Correct.

And so there's a lot of similarities and we talk about those things all the time.

Right.

One of the members turns out is one of the co-founders of Headspace.

Wow.

Cool. Cool. So there's like, you know, these kind of folks that are just, Nice. And you end up meeting them and spending time. So I love that kind of, which is not in your face, right? I'm very much, like I said earlier, I'm quite introverted. I hate personally talking about what do you do or that, playing the games of status, how much money you raise, like all that kind of stuff. I'm out, like as soon as I get—

I'm out. Right, right, right.

And so what I find Lisbon allows me to do is, find the people I need to find in my own way and also build those more authentic relationships too. That's

nice. That's great to hear. He also asked like a different question which I want to cover later, but we'll take a question from Haley, which is, how do you think about leadership today and how has that evolved over time?

Big question, but I think I'm now— what, how I think about it is, honestly, I think I'm very lucky because I was able to bring a team from On Deck who I wanted to build this with.

Mm-hmm.

And it becomes very different in leading this team. let's say, than recruiting people to build something that I don't know them, right? I haven't gone through the process. What I did go through is observing these folks in action. And when we were kind of forming the spinout, I was able to say, you know what, I don't want to do this without you, you, you, and you.

Mm-hmm.

And if one of those folks had said no, let's take Hayley, for example, I probably wouldn't have done this. We wouldn't be talking. Mm-hmm. And so it's an interesting question for me. Yeah, I'm able to lead very differently because a lot of the, I think, traditional challenges that come with leadership have been removed. because of the context and the relationships that we all have with each other. At least that's for like from, of course, we're not living in some utopia as a team, right? There's still challenges, but a lot of those things have been removed because we all have been working with each other. We all have that context and we all said yes to this very specific, unique, crazy thing that we decided to do.

Everybody's on board.

Right? And so there's, Right? There's another episode that, you know, we should one day maybe talk about how that whole process came about. But, you know, essentially these folks said yes to doing this with very little context.

And let's go, if you have like maybe a few moments, let's go a little deeper into the team building, right? Like you've built teams before. How is this team different and how bullish you are in terms of going with them like for a war or so?

Yeah, so again, I think having that context and everybody having worked with each other in a certain way, of course this thing, you know, friction that happens, you know, whatever, but we deal with them, I think, much differently because of the previous work that we've done together and the relationships that we built. Why I'm, I think, bullish on this team is because of how we structured the company. So, I touched on, right, we're intentionally not taking VC money.

Right.

Which is scary. The other thing that I've been dreaming about for about 20 years in having worked in many different companies and how I wanted to structure this is rewarding the team, not if there's ever some exit, but in the meantime. And

so,

we built in a profit-sharing scheme. We've given everybody meaningful equity.

Oh,

yeah. You know, what I try to do is essentially, prevent myself from being the only one that benefits if there's ever some type of an event. Right. And 2, that in the time that we're building, we're getting something from it. And guess what? That translates back into the community. We're of course not there yet, right? Right. We're not making profit yet. Right. But when that happens, like my absolute personal goal is sure, one day somebody comes to us and wants to acquire us for a ton of money and it's a life-changing sum, for everybody, let's do it.

Right.

Let's evaluate it. But in the meantime, before that happens, my personal goal is to, I want to be able to hand out a house deposit or a new car to every single person on the team every year. That's where I want to get to.

That's so awesome. That's great to hear. I think very few leaders think about employees in, in that depth. Um, so I'm, I'm sure that people like Ash, Janelle, these are good friends of mine. They're very lucky to be part of, uh, you know, such a tight-knit team. Uh, Vindagus, this is— this has been amazing, you know. Thanks for sharing all the stories.

I hope so.

I really loved your, your journey. It's so inspiring, and, and to the very least, it's like It's very authentic. That's why I really care about talking to people like you, because the whole podcast is about bringing those authentic stories. Before we close out, what's the deal with cheesecakes?

I love cheesecake, and it's a very easy answer for Ash. My favorite one is the one I make. I have a very easy recipe that you could go from ingredients to eating Delicious slice of cheesecake within about 3 hours. And usually it is a white chocolate cheesecake.

Nice. Nice. I love that. Love that. Someday, I think— let's— I hope someday we meet and I can get to eat your homemade white chocolate cheesecake. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Oof, I don't know. I mean, it's, I think that the only one is what I'm realizing, and again, we became Coho when layoffs were happening already in full swing and, you know, things were starting to become uncertain. And I really had to like think through a lot of different scenarios in deciding to do this and how do we do this? Yeah. What are the challenges that we may face? Like, really go from like, okay, A and B and D, like, what might be happening? What I'm kind of seeing though is, especially with this explosion of AI and, you know, whatever that becomes, but I think it is as significant as the internet and the first computers and all that. Yeah. I'm excited to build a community. Yeah. Because guess what everybody's going to need when we're about to be flooded with just AI-generated stuff?

Right.

Is real human interaction. And so that kind of puts us in a very interesting and unique position. Absolutely. To really do something here.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, even my take is kind of like similar, which is you You may— AI is going to solve the first maybe 10 steps, but you still have to go 100 steps, which is— it should be done by yourself, right? It may give you a lead, but on the other side, community is definitely, you know, AI can't do that. Like, you know, it requires human touch, personal connection. There's a sense of belonging and the bonding and the, you know, going through the highs and lows together as a you know, as a group. Those are the things that really matter. So, man, I loved talking to you. Let's keep in touch and hope, you know, absolutely, who listened to this enjoyed as well and, you know, got some lessons and inspiration out of it. But yeah, that's it. And thanks again for joining us, Vindagus. That's it for this episode. See you guys. Thank

you for having me. Appreciate it.

Absolutely.