Let's build the future,
  together!

Bloom is a small, remote-first, bootstrapped venture studio looking for a business-focused entrepreneur to join our team for the long-haul.

We started Bloom because we wanted to create value, on our own terms (hunting zebras not unicorns).

We've got a team with a strong web development background who loves to make things (a bit too much?). We deeply respect the value of customer development, it’s just not our forte, so we are seeking a new member to round-out our team.

Heads up:

• this an equity only position (everyone on the team has some way to pay-the-bills, ex. consulting on the side)
• with founder-level equity (under the same arrangment as all other team members)
• open to part-time (at least 10 hours/week) or full-time contributors
• remote (though, possibly hybrid if you're in Toronto, Canada)

The Role

• Broadly:
  • Work with rest of team on evaluating and building a variety of early stage ventures
  • Reach out to potential customers for customer discovery interviews (and later-stage ventures, early sales conversations)
  • Other responsibilities, depending on your interests and skills (we believe in self-allocation)
• More specifically, the role involves:
  • developing business canvasses
  • developing personas
  • finding contact information for potential customers
  • contacting customers (cold emails, etc.)
  • conducting customer discovery interviews
  • synthesizing from multiple interviews
  • evaluating opportunity with team (go/no-go, what needs to be changed)
  • developing marketing/sales copy for product websites
  • proposing experiments
• Not to be confused with:
  • “growth marketing”, running ad campaigns
  • bizdev / fundraising

This is what we think we're most in-need of right now, but, if that's not exactly what you'd like to be doing, but you do like the idea of working with Bloom, please reach out anyway!

Some of the Things We're Working On

• Unstuck
  • remote collaboration tool
  • high-fidelity software prototype completed
  • considering one of two business models
  • need: customer discovery and attempted sales to evaluate business models and/or changes to the product
• Penyo Pal
  • vocabulary learning mobile app
  • released many years ago to much customer love and grew to 1M users (sunset because of team implosion), but resurrected
  • need: lean-startup iteration, customer-discovery to identify changes to product and marketing insights
• Ledjr
  • bookkeeping software, aimed at power-users, with fast UX, programmable access and various AI-augmented interactions
  • working prototype, built internally to do our bookkeeping, "works for us"
  • need: customer development interviews to identify if there is an opportunity and who the customer is (and which angle is the strongest)
• MightySync
  • software to keep any two data sources in sync (ex. Salesforce <> Aritable, Excel Spreadsheet and Directory-of-JSON-files)
  • proof-of-concept prototype, used for some client work
  • need: customer development interviews to identify if this is an opportunity worth pursuing
• VNTRHB
  • legal and software infrastructure to allow for low-barrier collaboration on ventures
  • based on how Bloom works, formalization/productization of our legal structures and workflows (plus, dream of perfect versions of those)
  • need: do we lean into web3 where our early-adopters are most likely to be? do we keep it for ourselves to grow Bloom?

Qualifications / Experience

• For this role specifically:
  • understanding and appreciation for the lean-startup process and customer development
  • experience doing customer development in a startup (or, willingness to spend most of their time finding people to talk to, talking to them, analyzing the results)
• For Bloom, in general:
  • entrepreneurial experience - entreprenership is hard, and not the right path for everyone; ideally, you've been through the pain, understand what it takes, and choose to stay in the game; prefer risk to security
  • financial independence - capacity to contribute 10+/hours/week, purely for equity, indefinitely (ie. some way to pay-the-bills that still gives you plenty of energy to focus on Bloom ventures)
  • appreciation of remote work - did the-COVID-years leave you with an appreciation for remote work, or a deep longing to be back in the office? prefer deep focus to constant conversation
  • thrive in self-directed environment - ability to identify needs, set goals, learn on the job, work in unstructured environment; prefer freedom and choice over clear direction, creativity over routine
• For entrepreneurship, in general:
  • Some evidence of...
    • entrepreneurial initiative-taking
    • bias towards getting-shit-done
    • grit / resilience / perseverance through failure
    • intellectual horsepower
    • good interpersonal skills

The Company

Bloom is a venture studio, where entrepreneurs collaborate across ventures. It's a vehicle to support our members in creating value together.

Several years ago, after a failed startup, a group of friends got together, knowing we wanted to work on something together, but didn't know what. We believed that 5 people collaborating across 5 ideas is better than 5 working solo, and it's also better than 5 people committing immediately to one project. We began to collaborate on various projects, exploring and evaluating various ideas, occasionally taking on consulting work.

Over the years, members have come and gone, many projects have been started and abandoned, and we've learned some things that work better than others. We also had to come up with a new way to "do equity", because the classic approach didn't fit well with "many different people working different amounts of time on many different ventures". And we learned a lot about ourselves.

Why does Bloom exist?

• we want to create value, scalably – broadly this means "entrepreneurship"
• there are lots of different way of doing "startups", we're less focused on "investable" and "unicorn-likely" and more on positive impact, principles and things we want to see in the world
• there are barriers to entrepreneurial collaboration (ex. traditional approach to equity), we should decrease them
• there are huge opportunities to entrepreneurial collaboration (ex. everyone leaning in to their strengths, always working on high-leverage things)
• ∴ let's build the future, together

Some Bloom Things:

• Remote-first / Async Workflow / Flexible Hours / Avoid Meetings
• Self-Allocation (everyone chooses what they think is best to work on)
• Pair Programming / Pair Work Sessions - scheduled weekly 1:1 pair-work sessions (not meetings/discussions; pair code, or pair write emails, etc.)
• Equity under the same rules for everyone (earned on each project based on market-equivalent compensation)

Some cultural tidbits:

• We chose remote+async workflow even though we lived in the same city (and several years before COVID)
• An unintentional bias towards building-because-we-enjoy-building rather than thinking-whether-we-should
• A mild(?) case of NIH (not-invented here), we prefer reimplementing some libraries than depending on someone else's sloppy javascript, or integrating with a much of other systems
• We had remote social hours, but cancelled them, because we preferred to just keep working on our stuff

The Weirdos You'll Be Working With

• Raf
  • @ bloom since 2013 (day 0)
  • entrepreneurship has broken me several times; I've often struggled to get back up
  • I'm better at making things usable than making things pretty
  • programming is my ideal state (as long as it's Clojure; I don’t care to bother with anything else anymore)
  • I have been trying to fill-in-the-gaps of all the non-technical jobs-to-be-done at Bloom, but, I have accepted/realized it's best to find someone else who enjoys it
  • I tend to see the flaws in our products (which is good for building product), but have a hard time switching to seeing the good things (which makes sales hard)
  • I like doing customer development interviews, but not scheduling them
  • I have a very hard time cold emailing/calling
  • I get frustated with "Lean Startup's" bias to quick and dirty hacks (ie. technical debt) vs. proper, clean, approaches
  • I geek out over board games, voting methods and novel-equity-compensation methods
• James
  • @ bloom since 2013
  • I started working with Raf in the ancient times (back in university)
  • I'm very much focused on coding; prefers backend, learning new things
  • I introduced Raf to Clojure, secretly planning to get him on Prolog next
  • I can get too focused on implementing a solution, even if it’s very hard, instead of re-evaluating if it’s worth the effort
  • I used to lift heavy things competitively; now I compete in throwing slightly less-heavy things
• Berk
  • @ bloom since 2020
  • joined Bloom after finishing a web development bootcamp (where James and Raf were teaching)
  • I love working independently, creating value without the usual 9-5
  • I'm into coding, strategizing, experimenting and trying new things

How to Apply?

Shoot raf@bloomventures.io an email, or book a time to chat.