the co-matter podcast

Sarah Clark is the Chief Marketing Officer of Rapha, the British cycling brand known and loved for celebrating cycling as a sport and culture.

Rapha is a prime example of how a brand can build an authentic community around a clear purpose: it runs its own cycling club with thousands of members, operates 22 clubhouses around the world, organizes weekly rides that anyone can join, produces movies, has a beautiful print magazine and a ton of other projects that help people discover their passion for cycling.

I met Sarah at Rapha's London headquarters to find out how it all came about: how Rapha got started, how her vision of the brand evolved and Sarah's advice for people who want to start their own mission-driven brand.

Links:

http://www.rapha.cc

http://www.rapha.cc/rcc

Claire is the founder of Ladies Get Paid, an organization and global community that helps women rise up at work. Since its launch in 2016, Ladies Get Paid has grown to 30,000 members in more than 60 countries.

We talk about how it all got started: how Ladies Get Paid grew from a meetup in a tiny New York apartment to a global movement, how Claire attached a business model to it, her advice for community founders and her vision for growing Ladies Get Paid in the future.

Links:

http://www.ladiesgetpaid.com

http://www.claireslovesyou.com

Charles Adler is a designer, entrepreneur and technologist most well known for being the co-founder and former Head of Design of Kickstarter; the crowdfunding platform that forever changed how creativity gets funded.

Charles then founded Lost Arts, a 25,000 sqf workspace in Chicago, and travels the world to speak about social entrepreneurship, technology and creativity.

We talk about his experience in building Kickstarter, how he designs community at Lost Arts, the difference in building a global online platform vs a physical workspace, corporate responsibility and social change through technology.

Links:

http://www.twitter.com/cadler

http://www.lostarts.co

Nelly Ben Hayoun is a designer of experiences. Sometimes called the "Willy Wonka of Design and Science" or “Part designer, part performance artist, part space traveller”, Nelly and her team are known for transcending boundaries.

They create orchestras together with NASA space scientists, put dark energy in your kitchen sink or create places such as The University of the Underground, Nelly’s latest venture that teaches critical thinking, unconventional research and social dreaming to post-graduate students.

At her studio in London, Nelly told me more about how it all came about and what it means to design an experience.

Rafe Offer is the co-founder & CEO of Sofar Sounds, a global movement that brings people together over live music in an intimate setting. Based out of London, Sofar was launched in 2009 and now stages concerts in 398 cities worldwide.

In our conversation we talk about the humble beginnings of Sofar, the challenges of growing it as a non-technical team, leadership, monetization, their recent funding by Sir Richard Branson and Rafe's vision for Sofar's future.

Linda Liukas is a children’s book author and the creator of Hello Ruby, a book that teaches children about the whimsical world of computers, technology and coding. Hello Ruby was the first children’s book that raised $380,000 on Kickstarter and is published in over 24 languages today.

In our conversation, we talk about how Linda's early adventures on the Internet have shaped her creativity, how she built Rails Girls into a global movement that teaches women how to code, the process of funding a book through Kickstarter and her thoughts on dealing with criticism, maximizing freedom and living a fulfilled life.

Justin Gignac is the founder of Working Not Working, a marketplace that connects companies with the universe’s most creative creatives.

Founded in 2012 by Justin and his friend Adam Tompkins in New York City, the platform now includes over 10.000 members that work together with over 2000 of the world's best companies such as Apple, The New York Times, Airbnb and Wieden+Kennedy.

In our interview, Justin shares what it takes to build a community like Working Not Working; and how he wants to grow it while staying true to its mission.

Annamaria Olsson is the founder of Give Something Back to Berlin; an award-winning project that connects refugees and migrants from all backgrounds through knowledge sharing.

What started with a Facebook post in 2012 has helped thousands of newly arrived Berliners integrate in society, make friends and learn the language. In our interview, Annamaria shares the story on how it all got started and the learnings she made from building this unique community over the past 5 years.

Simon is one of the founding members and Director of Communications at SPACE10 - a future living lab on a mission to design a better and more sustainable way of living.

With projects ranging from vertical farming to the future of meatballs, the team at the Copenhagen-based research lab works with a global network of collaborators to not only research what the future brings, but also prototype it. The results are then open-sourced and available to anyone.

In our conversation we talk about how SPACE10 got started, how their community-based approach convinced IKEA to support them, and why Simon doesn’t believe in 300 page innovation reports - but rather in creative artworks like a photo series on the future of meatballs that went around the world.

Martin and Kara are part of the team of Government Digital Services; the digital unit of the UK Government that's widely recognized to set standards for the way citizens interact with government online.

In this conversation Severin sat down with Martin and Kara at The Whitechapel Building in London to talk about what it means to build better services for citizens, how GDS works like a startup within the government and how they share knowledge and build community with civil servants across the country.