https://sebastianstockmarr.com Sebastian Stockmarr Thu, 16 Sep 2021 15:49:39 +0000 https://sebastianstockmarr.com en https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Project-overview Mon, 29 Jun 2020 20:05:23 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Project-overview ︎&nbsp; Apylon / Co-founder FEB 2025 — PRESENT&nbsp;︎ ︎ &nbsp;Founders / Partner &amp; Head of Design 2014 — PRESENT&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎&nbsp; “Great design starts with writing” SEP 2021&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎ &nbsp;Tempo / Co-founder 2018 — 2021&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎&nbsp; “UI Breakfast Podcast: Habit-Forming Products” JUL 2020&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎&nbsp; “Build something people want to build” JUN 2020&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎&nbsp; “The quality of an object” MAR 2018&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎ &nbsp;Kontist / Co-founder 2015 — EXIT2022&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎ &nbsp;Magma / Co-founder 2010 — EXIT2012&nbsp;︎︎︎ ︎ &nbsp;Aabenbart / Founder 2006 — 2012&nbsp;︎︎︎ https://sebastianstockmarr.com/About Mon, 29 Jun 2020 19:26:35 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/About &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; I am a Partner &amp; Head of Design at Founders where I build companies with a talented bunch of misfits. I am a humanist. I believe that people should define technology and not the other way around. I am fascinated by the impact of technology on society and spend my time trying to improve both.My role is that of a founder. I believe in design driven businesses and specialize in managing the processes that make this happen. From product strategy to execution. I believe in design driven businesses and specialize in managing the processes that make this happen. <img width="1000" height="1334" width_o="1000" height_o="1334" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/50ec0e5bef57cd037d41dc078d41c021d281120d9ea3bbabbaa965a8aac8e6e8/meme.jpg" data-mid="137038966" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/50ec0e5bef57cd037d41dc078d41c021d281120d9ea3bbabbaa965a8aac8e6e8/meme.jpg" /> https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Founders Fri, 26 Jun 2020 18:37:40 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Founders Founders www.founders.as ︎︎︎ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Founders is a company that invests in, and builds, software companies. Our approach is to be highly specialized in terms of areas, healthtech and fintech, and in terms of stage, pre product and pre market, and highly concentrated working with few companies at a time. This allows us to do the job of earliest stage investing, and company building, as we think it should be done. We work hands-on with product strategy, design, development and distribution, and help the founders scale to independent companies as they gain traction. Founders was financed by Kirkbi, William Demant Invest &amp; Heartland which perfectly embody the traditional business building values we aspire to instil in our companies. As Partner &amp; Head of Design my role is shaping the product and building the team over the first 6-18 months. In addition I manage the internal design team and our creation processes. ︎︎ Partner &amp; Head of Design ︎︎ ︎︎ 2014 — Present ︎︎ ︎︎&nbsp;Built design team &amp; creation processes&nbsp;︎︎ https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Great-design-starts-with-writing Thu, 16 Sep 2021 15:49:39 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Great-design-starts-with-writing ︎︎&nbsp;Sep 16, 2021 ︎︎ Great design starts with writing &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;When we’re excited about what we’re creating, it is easy to get lost in the process. Pursuing possibilities that reveal themselves halfway through. Being led astray by the capabilities of our tools and technologies. Or just losing track of “the why” that we set out from in the first place. The best method for doing great design work is writing. In prose. Not in bullet points, not wireframes, not diagrams, and never spreadsheets. There are no interferences and constraints other than the original outset when writing. The lack of a cohesive, sensible narrative makes it a bore to read and the experience of writing it painful. And there’s a good chance that if you can’t write the narrative in prose, the end result will be hard to understand and even harder to sell. All the things we deliberately or unconsciously brush over when thinking about a design become not just a slight pause but debilitating to reading it later. Inconsistencies stand out like a sore thumb. Blind spots become empty spaces on the page. The essential ties together seamlessly, while the superfluous has to be forced in. You can’t hide a bad idea behind aesthetics, and if the true motivation is really just attention through novelty, then great, more power to you, write it down and commit to it. And this is the true value: it forces the work to be honest. Honest design is good design. https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Literal Mon, 05 Oct 2020 08:42:38 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Literal Literal www.literal.club ︎︎︎ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Literal is the best platform to collectively explore the ideas of the world’s greatest authors. We want to go beyond reviews and give space for diving into the atoms that make up a book. We're building Literal to let you share the most impactful moments of your reading and get a window into what moves the people you care about. Whether you're reading for entertainment or learning, we want to give you the foundation for sparking great conversations. Literal is designed based on the idea that trust beats algorithms in the game of recommendation and that we are all trusted. Some by millions of followers, others in close-knit groups, we want to give you space for both. ︎︎ Co-founder via Founders ︎︎ ︎︎ 2020 — 2021 ︎︎ ︎︎ Product Strategy, Business Development ︎︎ https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Tempo-1 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:07:21 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Tempo-1 Tempo www.yourtempo.co ︎︎︎ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tempo is was the email client that helps you focus. Email, as we have known it recently, is a disaster. Since the first message was sent almost 50 years ago, its use has exploded, and with it its misuses. From spam to endless reply-all threads, to the proliferation of newsletters, email is used for anything and everything. It is evident that the time has come for email to be unbundled. But if Slack is better for rapid in-company communication; if Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat are better for chatting with your friends; if Google Drive is better for sharing files; if a to-do list is better for, well, reminders; what’s email good for? I shaped a product around the concept of long form communication which still has a place in this world, combined with simple mechanics for managing the incoming chaos.Tempo is now part of Lovemail︎︎︎&nbsp; ︎︎ Co-founder via Founders ︎︎ ︎︎ 2018 — 2021 ︎︎ ︎︎ Vision, concept, product design, UX/UI design, branding, marketing ︎︎ https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Build-something-people-want-to-build Mon, 29 Jun 2020 20:48:32 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Build-something-people-want-to-build ︎︎&nbsp;Jun 29, 2020 ︎︎ Build something people want to build &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;You’ve probably heard the classic “make something people want”, but even more than idea, funding or know how, the biggest advantage you can have when starting a company is an exceptional team. Every individual you add to your team in the beginning has an outsized impact on your company. Everything from their brilliance to bad habits will weave its way into the fabric of your organization and stay long after they’re gone. No pressure. It’s a trite trope that investors invest in teams and not ideas, but it’s done for a reason: a great team is a better indicator of a projects potential for success than anything else. So, this being such a defining characteristic, how can we optimize it? The best way to set an exceptional team is&nbsp;building something that people actually want to build. Don’t build some value extracting native advertisement bullshit middle man network. Don’t build a cheaper knock-off. Even if you’re looking at the world through the lense of die-hard capitalism, it’s still the better choice to do something fun. Build something that’s going to make a difference, something extraordinary, a challenge and something you’d feel proud telling your grandkids about. If you find that thing there’s a good chance a brilliant person somewhere will share that feeling with you and join the adventure. https://sebastianstockmarr.com/The-quality-of-an-object Mon, 29 Jun 2020 19:57:41 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/The-quality-of-an-object ︎︎&nbsp;Mar 2, 2018&nbsp;︎︎ The quality of an object &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; I’ll admit to having a bit of an ego — which most people with a strong urge for creation probably have. For the most part, this has served me well in terms of creative confidence and risk taking, but recently the pursuit of creating something extraordinary has taught me something else. In order to create the best possible products, I’ve been thinking about the word “quality” and what defines the quality of an object. In particular for products in the shape of services and software like the ones I spend most of my days working on. Let’s start with what quality is not: Quality is not defined by the success of a product. A common misconception is that quality and success go hand in hand, while in reality there is often an inherent misalignment between the wants of a company producing a product and those of the person using it. Aligning company goals with the value provided — as ephemeral as it might be — is the foundation for a company that is built to last and another reason to be aware of what the true quality of a product actually is. Secondly, we need to acknowledge that we don’t live in a completely utilitarian world, so defining an object’s quality simply by its output is also not an option. To be a bit blunt, the definitive quality of an object is unmeasurable. At least not in a simple enough way so as to use it as a compass for what to create and what to steer away from. It’s important for me to stress the point that we can’t — and shouldn’t — attribute our work as designers to art, but rather accept that the world is far too complex for us to put into numbers, as tempting as it might be. So how do we know what to strive for when creating something? &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Ironically, the best clue I’ve gotten in the search for true quality came from someone talking about mathematical proofs: As much as a person can discover and publish a proof of something, that person didn’t actually create the underlying rules of it. Those rules have always been true and part of the world we live in, even before anyone put the proof into words and numbers. Much like the mathematical proof that holds true whether we acknowledge it or not, we often don’t notice the best products that surround us. They disappear into our daily lives because they don’t intrude on our humanity as foreign objects. It is as if they are almost meant to exist, and it would seem stranger for them not to be there, rather than the opposite. In turn, our job as designers is not to come up with something new, but to discover what’s already true — we can think of it as the conflict between the natural and the unnatural. Unnatural qualities come in the form of dishonest design and cheap tricks. It’s the flickering sign that grabs your attention, the dark patterns that make people addicted to products that aren’t actually valuable to them. It’s the empty ad campaign trying to win the award instead of telling the story, for the sole sake of stroking the designer’s ego. It’s the product that is purposefully designed to hook users and cause unnecessary pain if they give it up or that employs social mechanics to lure people from the start. It’s design made for the person and company creating the product, not the people interacting with it. From creation to discovery &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; In short, we need to change our approach to design from pure creation to discovery. It’s easy to fall into the trap of addition for the sake of novelty when designing new products. It’s tempting because we all know how easy it is to turn heads when doing something that breaks with people’s, established mental models of how the world is suppose to be. It might sound like we can’t create anything new, but luckily the world around us continuously evolves, providing new opportunities for creating products and tools that are both natural and valuable in their context. All we have to do is look for cracks in the human experience and seek means to fill them in, without creating unnatural bumps. We all too often hear “minimalism” and “non-design” referred to as goals, but this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding. Minimalism as a goal is in itself worthless, but the reason it often results in great products is that it removes a lot of the unnatural qualities. It creates boundaries that keep our desire for extravagant creation in check. The end result of pure minimalism is, however, often a sterile and unnatural object, if we don’t manage to discover the object’s place in its context and expose it. Again, this is not about creativity but rather observance, to discover the object’s often subtle but vital natural qualities. A new goal &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; As a consequence of favoring discovery over creation, the concept of ownership of an object also changes. Much like the mathematician discovering a fundamental truth, we as designers shouldn’t take credit for the objects we create if they are truly natural. It’s not an exact science, but given enough time, my ambition is that someone somewhere will re-create my work, bit for bit, word by word, one experience after the other. This requires completely letting go of any ego, and the parts of myself that I’ve been putting into my work. In doing so, I find an unmistakable duality when circling back to why I started my search for what quality is. https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Kontist-1 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:10:01 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Kontist-1 Kontist www.kontist.com ︎︎︎ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Kontist is a bank for freelancers and self-employed. I developed the first version of Kontist out of Berlin for Founders over the course of 8 months. The core idea showed itself after having interviewed freelancers in search of a smarter solution to invoicing and payment between them and their clients. We discovered that the core anxiousness around the topic, wasn't the individual client and their ability to pay, but stemmed from a deeper uncertainty about their general finances which could be traced back to sporadic and out of date bookkeeping. To be able to give a complete real-time view of this information we had to become the core of their finances: their bank. In this process we learned just how much of an underserved demographic the self-employed truly was, and that all the benefits that the average employee receive from employers and unions are far from the world that the freelancers live in. A mission was born: to empower each of these individuals to act as a 'union of one'.Kontist was acquired by Ageras︎︎︎ in 2022. ︎︎ Co-founder via Founders ︎︎ ︎︎ 2015 — 2016 ︎︎ ︎︎ Vision, concept, customer development, product design, product strategy ︎︎ https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Magma-1 Mon, 29 Jun 2020 22:12:44 +0000 Sebastian Stockmarr https://sebastianstockmarr.com/Magma-1 Magma www.magmahq.com ︎︎︎ www.issuu.com︎︎︎ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Having worked in traditional print publishing of lifestyle magazines at the time when software was starting to eat up the world, I saw an opportunity for creating a better tool for editorial teams to collaborate. Despite an extremely established industry with advanced software there was some unique mechanics that made this a perfect fit for a online product. Unlike normal businesses, the publications with the biggest editorial teams are in fact not the established ones who employs a steady editorial team, but rather the small to mid-level publications that hires a changing roster of freelancers for each issue. I started Magma along with two co-founders in 2010 as a part of Startupbootcamp, built the product and team over the next year after a small seed investment. Magma was acquired by Issuu the following year.︎︎ Co-founder ︎︎ ︎︎ 2010 — 2012 ︎︎ ︎︎ Vision, concept, fundraising, built initial team, product design, product strategy ︎︎