The New SuperFriendly

Last week, I wrote about timing, how some ideas can only thrive when the conditions are right.

In 2022, I shut down my agency SuperFriendly after 10 years of running it. It felt like the right move for me at the time, and 2? years later, I can confirm that it was. As I wrote then, “for the first time in a decade, I think I’m running out of things that I want to learn or try through this vehicle.”

But even though I was done with SuperFriendly, that didn’t mean that SuperFriendly was done—on the contrary. As I also wrote about then, there were more people in the world who believed what we believed when I shut it down than when I started. And there are more people who believe it today than when I shut it down. Our focus on enterprise-level design systems evolved alongside the industry—and, dare I say, helped to move it forward—and are even more prevalent and important today.

Some things need to pause before they can evolve.

That’s exactly what’s happening now. The conditions are different. The timing is right for something new.

Barrel Holdings (led by Peter Kang and Sei-Wook Kim ) has acquired SuperFriendly, and they’re preparing it for its new future. They’ve brought in a new CEO— Jon Sukarangsan —to lead what comes next. I’ve spent some time with Jon, and I’m excited about his vision and what he and the team are building.

I’m not the right person to lead this next evolution of SuperFriendly. The skills and vision that got it here aren’t the same ones needed to take it forward. I’m grateful for what Barrel Holdings and Jon are bringing to the table, to do things I wasn’t capable of on my own. I’m now a board member and an equity partner of the new SuperFriendly. I’m still invested in it and rooting for it, even though I’m no longer running things. My job isn’t to steer it anymore; it’s to support the awesome people who are from the sidelines.

If you’re a former client reading this, SuperFriendly is still here to help organizations scale their design systems, now with the backing of a company that gives you access to more capabilities and expertise as well as the operations to support it.

If you were a SuperFriend—one of the many talented designers, engineers, strategists, writers, and more who made this agency what it was—this is an opportunity to collaborate in new ways. Drop me a line and I’ll introduce you to Jon to hear how you fit into all this.

And if you’ve followed along because you cared about how we did things, I think you’ll find what Jon and the team are building to be just as thoughtful and ambitious as what came before.

A few people have already asked me how this kind of deal works. Selling an agency isn’t like selling a product; you don’t just put it on the market and wait for offers. It’s part strategy, part timing, and part luck. There’s a lot I’m not at liberty to share (or share yet), but I can tell you this: if you’re running a business today, start making decisions today that will make it valuable to someone else later, even if you don’t think you’ll ever part with it. If you want me to write more about that, let me know.

SuperFriendly is evolving. If you’ve trusted and enjoyed our work in the past, I think you’ll want to see what’s next.

—Dan