Painting WeCanvas

How we found a reason to exist in the middle of a pandemic

When you hear about a start up business your mind takes you straight to a bunch of friends in somebody’s garage working on something they are passionate about.

Disappointing as it may sound, this was never our case. I don’t even think that Cat, Gustavo and myself considered each other a friend. We worked in the same company, were part of the same team but we would not go out for drinks after work and we never made plans for a future outside our corporate life.

And yet when the time came to start a new journey, it felt like a natural move. I think what brought us together is the reason why we wanted to do what we do.

We left our corporate life in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic but we had known in advance of the restructure in the company so we were mentally ready for a change and in no rush to decide our next step.

“Nobody was ready for the magnitude of the change”

When the pandemic hit with lockdown, furloughs and remote working in the best case, we looked around us and saw friends, businesses, teams in complete shock and disbelief.

Nobody was ready for the magnitude of the change: Customer needs and expectations changed, buying behaviours, ways of working, industries that had to completely stop their activities. There was an urgent need to find a new flexible business model to take them through the pandemic and beyond.

We started taking small projects from companies and friends that were forced to stop their activity by the pandemic and saw it as an opportunity to stop and re-invent themselves. We were excited at the idea of helping them and use the experience we had treasured along the years and in return discover and learn from them.

In the first few months it was just Gustavo and I but we soon realised we needed a creative vision, someone that understood branding and co-creation processes.

So in the winter of a pandemic, sitting in a cold corner of an empty cafeteria in Barcelona we told Cat that we wanted to make a positive impact and help people and teams to be successful. That our skills and personalities combined could make a solid team.

So it was not in a garage, and it was not a bunch of friends.

It was three professionals with passion ready to take on a journey full of people, data and creativity.

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