Building in public

Hi all. You are now 662 subscribers to this newsletter and I thank you all for joining Squadra on a journey to executive freelancing.

I am a big fan of "building in public" and I want to very openly share what we have learnt along the way since we have been operating back in December 2023.

Our mission is for executive freelancing to become as common and appealing as a pathway as it's been for designers, engineers and communication experts for a long time

So, let's start with some facts and milestones

• 50 senior global leaders in the collective. Airtable link for you to browse our talent pool. No need to have an account or sign in.
• Recently added some very talented leaders Jonathan Sousa ex head of Customer success Loom Dropbox as part-time CSO , Sergi Bastardas founder and CEO of Colvin as mentor and Huria Ogbamichael as a leadership coach.
• While we work remotely, we are organised around 4 chapters. Lisbon, Paris, London and San Francisco. Members meet up on a regular basis which helps with cross pollination, engagement and team work.
• We signed 9 mandates. 3 part-time and 6 mentoring. Average day rate of €1,800 ex VAT for part-time work, hourly rate of €600 ex VAT for mentoring.
• 80% of our mandates originates from B2B saas startups turning over between €1M and €2M ARR.
• Some of our customers include Cowboy Attractions.io Walkie Talkie Mangas.io PEAK Sport Media amongst others

Reality check & learnings

• 4 mandates could not be fulfilled since we had not anticipated that much demand from B2B saas especially on the growth side of things.
• We thought part-time ( a.k.a ) would take off stronger and represent most of our mandates. It's the other way around with mentoring leading the charge.
• Anticipated most of the demand to come from well funded scale ups. Most work we have done is pre-series A. Some pre-seed.
• Closing a part-time or mentoring mandate consumes the same effort for the team at Squadra whereas the unit economics are obviously very much in favour of part-time.
• With 50 members and 9 mandates signed to date, "only" 20% of the collective generated an income through the platform since Jan 1st 2024. That's not enough.

What's next ?

• With a few exceptions, we are not adding more members prior to late Summer. Our focus will be to get 50% of the collective generating revenue by the end of Q3 with a goal of 75% by year end. Waitlist open here.
• Increased our platform commission on mentoring mandates to 25%, sticking to 20% on part-time placements. Rates mentioned above do include Squadra's cut.
• Launching an AI webinar series led by Frederic Chanay first to be deployed within the collective. This is part of our peer learning dimension, enabling members to tap into one another expertise.
• Send a building in public update every 6 weeks. We need many more leaders and other collectives / ventures contributing to this emerging executive freelancing trend.

Thanks for reading. Please react, comment, share.

Yours, Benoit.