Huddle Stories, Episode 032: A year of building
We released our 2023 Wrap-up, sharing what we created, observed and achieved last year as a design community.
Hey there! In today’s edition, we’re excited to share our annual report, the Huddle 2023 Wrap-up, which we released this past week.
Last year, our design membership doubled in size, while also doubling the number of projects completed. This has all happened organically, with the help of our amazing community and being at the right place at the right time.
Speaking of right place and right time, if you’re a founder looking to build your team leveraging fractional experts in 2024, you’re ahead of the curve. And you’re in luck because there are more potential teammates, especially top designers, available to work on your company than ever.
We’re seeing more and more creatives becoming Fractional Heads of Design/Product/Marketing. The world of work is flowing faster toward flexibility.
Read on to hear about what went down inside Huddle during 2023 – including our most active members, what we’re most proud of and where things are heading.
More soon,
Mike & Steph
Founders at Huddle
Shout-Out: Top Huddle members of 2023
In 2023, we onboarded roughly 750 new designers and builders from places like Slack, OnDeck, Bumble, Dropbox, Robinhood and many more.
Some members really stepped up and got involved – inviting more startups to use Huddle, growing the design community and, of course, contributing to projects. Special shout out to these members!
Top contributors: 1. Katrina A., 2. Paul M., 3. Adi E., 4. Aashni S., 5. Callum G., 6. Jamal J., 7. Maz A., 8. Nate B., 9. Seth F., 10. Chris R., 11. Diana K., 12. Christina H., 13. Stephanie M., 14. Katie N., 15. Stacy T., 16. Daniel P., 17. Derrick K., 18. Jonny M., 19. Jon B., 20. Ankit J.
Most companies invited: 1. Mych R., 2. Stacy T., 3. Adi E., 4. Melanie P., 5. Allison C., 6. Callum G., 7. Joseph D., 8. Leonardo V., 9. Nwamaka A., 10. Tom W.
Most members invited: 1. Jira V., 2. Joseph D., 3. Katrina A., 4. Aashni S., 5. Adi E., 6. Sebhia D., 7. Sarah J., 8. Ava S., 9. Charlotte W., 10. Pablo P.
👉 Are you a founder or hiring manager? Get a design team or expert by Friday and start working together within a week. You can always book a free design scoping call with us to get started.
Dig in: Huddle’s 2023 Wrap-up
We shared a report on what got done in 2023 – including our most popular requests, YoY growth and launches like our podcast, Lone Geniuses.
We’re most proud of the 100 new Huddle projects completed this year, which we’ll be sharing more about over the coming months.
Over half those projects were with companies “huddling” for the second time or third time. Plus, we saw 20% of companies on Huddle embed huddlers in their team for >6 months. This is the power of Huddle as a flexible design department for companies. It’s exciting to see more plugging into it.
Check out the highlights in the post below or read the full report here.
Huddle Love
Founder of DTC company Yana (& Huddle member!) Anastasia Alt:
“In 4 weeks, we had a live website and brand to get press from major publications. Huddle was the perfect launch partner.”
In case you’re new here…
Huddle is an expert fractional design community.
We help companies launch, grow and create beautiful products. We move fast and understand startups. Join and get a pop-up design team or a fractional design expert from places like Airbnb, Snap and Red Antler.
🪄 Teams getting paid in equity
Equity – as both a tool for startups to move quicker and leaner and as a tool for builders to earn ownership – is close to our hearts at Huddle. We’ve enabled equity as a way to pay since we launched and we’ve even created our own note (Creator Agreement for Future Equity, the “CAFE”).
We’ve been rolling out ways to make it even easier, by offering equity as a payment option right inside the Huddle app. Startups can now clearly see when their potential Huddle team is interested in taking a portion of their payment in cash and equity.
Startups can hold more cash, get builders that have skin in the game.
The cash portion of the agreement is one-click pay through the Huddle app.
Huddle handles the equity documentation within 3-5 business days.
Huddle is powered by friends helping friends.
Gift a founder an invite to Huddle so they can move quicker and get better design. They’ll get expedited access to an expert designer or team and you’ll get $250 as a thank you from the Huddle community.