Teams Reimagined with Robin

As an investor, I often meet founders and change drivers who are reimagining all aspects of our lives. From reshaping spaces to rethinking banking and even eyewear, these entrepreneurs are reinventing offline businesses. In my most recent LinkedIn Live show , “Reimagined with Robin,” I chatted with Raphael Ouzan , Founder and CEO of A.Team , a platform where highly-skilled workers come together to work on the problems that matter the most to them.

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

What are you reimagining?

Raphael grew up in the Champagne region in France, which was very much not a tech hub. At the time though, the internet was becoming a big thing. After reading books on programming, Raphael started helping people build websites and software as a freelancer. After moving to Israel and starting a few companies, he realized the most meaningful thing to him was working on problems that he found fulfilling with the people who he wanted to work? with.

The question that prompted the founding of A.Team was: How can you enable people who like building things to team up with one another and work on problems together, while still giving them the autonomy over the decisions that shape their careers and lives?

Why is this happening now?

“We experience the teams more than we experience the companies that we are part of,” Raphael says. At A.Team, he sees more and more companies asking themselves, “How do we build a company of the future?”?

Work has evolved a lot in the last 10 years, especially with the introduction of the gig economy from companies like Uber or DoorDash. This had led to two major shifts:

• The transformation that A.Team is creating is called the builder economy, where highly-skilled builders have autonomy over choosing the problems they want to work on.
• Since the pandemic, society’s relationship to work has been evolving. People quit their jobs or moved out of cities to become fully remote workers. Companies were forced to think more about business efficiencies and to learn how to move faster, because downturns did not necessarily mean slowdowns. Raphael believes that the greatest disruption is still ahead.?

How will our world change over the next 5-10 years, and what role will A.Team play in it?

The biggest risk preventing companies from moving faster is the loss of momentum. Momentum is the currency that drives everything forward. A.Team aims to accelerate the “strike zone”— people’s core focus—and helps teams build, learn, and iterate faster. This maximizes flexibility without increasing risk and overhead.

How are you reimagining yourself as a leader?

There is always value in taking a step back and reassessing the bigger picture. Raphael finds himself graduating to the kind of leader who tries to help people and teams think about their missions, visions, and the outcomes they want to drive, as well as ultimately trusting people to figure out how to get there.

Follow GGV Capital to tune into more “Reimagined with Robin” conversations!

*Special thanks to my colleagues?Amy Chen and?Megan Tung who made this come to life!