Introducing MOMENT

For a little over a year we have repeatedly brought Riley and his team on board to help us. We’ve long realised and accepted: Some design work that happens at companies will always be scoped, project-based work. It has a defined end date and priced predictably.

When we augment teams, just like in any other in-house team, sometimes this work collides with the day-to-day. They’re little moments along the way that need a dedicated project, and for these moments you often end up bringing in help and find another way.

We consistently found ours in Riley. Paired with our team, he’d come in, run the project, and it would all go very very smoothly each time. So of course, we got thinking: Should we just bring him on board? Should we offer project-based work?

The answer is: Not quite.

We ended up acquiring a strategic stake in Riley’s company Oratory. Enough to be a serious partner, but also sized so he’s still incentivised to build his own company. Here’s what we’re doing together now:

In addition to team augmentation

We work with founders and those closest to them when they need help with design. Often, we find that all their needs and asks point to one thing:

They want design to be a function of their company. They want institutional memory and taste. Something that lasts longer than any one person on the team. We already solved this with our model:

When we work with companies, we ask ourselves: “How good could this be?” and “What kind of function does this company need to produce this consistently?”. Then we take people from our team, map them to the desired state of the organisation, and lend them to the company for up to a year, often fractionally. Then they see what good looks like in practice, and a lot of work gets done and sets the bar for design at the company. Only then do we start replacing ourselves through active recruiting, and that takes some time.

In the process of all this, we’re often part of a launch or two. Those are moments. They’re often tight timelines with lots of coordination, and they need to be carefully navigated without getting in the way of all other work.

Riley and his team have supported some of them, and will now be integrated more meaningfully.

As an entirely new company

We’re going to continue serving the exact same market that Riley has been serving with Oratory. The brand and current service will be discontinued and replaced with MOMENT.

moment.so MOMENTHelping companies look and feel undeniable. All for a one-time flat fee.

We’re convinced that treating design as a function is what will have the largest, longest lasting impact on a company. We also know that what we do comes at a cost, and it’s not the right thing for some companies some of the time.

It’s exactly right for most of the companies that we haven’t historically been able to serve, and specifically services founders that need to (re-)position and (re-)launch on tight timelines. It’s an offering that combines Brand and Web, designed to be run as a four week sprint. We’ll help architect a better story, develop supporting visual themes and assets, and you walk away with an online presence that doesn’t hold you back.

An opinionated approach that curates exclusively what is actually needed to ship, all for a one-time fee.

Riley will continue on as CEO of MOMENT and operate it as a separate company. It is as much a continuation of what he has built for the past 2 years as it is an additional offering within our family of companies.

“I strongly believe that design and first impressions have never been more important. The bar has moved, and timelines have been compressed. We’ve been impressed with Riley and his team. There’s no agency theatre, no surprises, and no scope that quietly balloons. Stuff just ships. So when we started thinking about this additional service, we knew we’d want Riley on board.”

“Working with Niclas and his team has always been fantastic. They set an incredibly high bar for design and the culture around it. The work that I’m most proud of has all come out of working with them. We’re excited to join their family of companies and help shape more great companies through design.”

Everything we have always done is built on the idea that design is the function that turns a business from “technically works” into “people want this, trust this, remember this, and keep paying for this.”

This is the next entry.

Niclas ErnstCEO and Co-Founder