“One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” ― Sophocles
I explore web3 collectives, combining org design theory with digital community building. Currently, I am a Core Researcher in the Summer of Protocols program, investigating the protocols of online formations and their impact on modern firms.
Day to day, I serve as a community architect, researching and implementing digital-first operating models, with a particular focus on next-generation leadership, operations, and community management technologies. It is my passion to gain a deep understanding of these areas.
My most recent work experience was at Mirror, a web3 publishing platform, where I provided support for community development, user research, and creator partnerships. Prior to that, I worked as a strategy consultant, enterprise account partner, and product advisor for HR technologies.
Feel free to get in contact via Twitter (@rafathebuilder), Farcaster (@rafa), or BlueSky (@rafathebuilder). Alternatively, feel free to send an email to rafael@rafael.fyi.
You can join my deep reading community here.
You can book 1:1 advisory time here.
Recent Publishing:
Here you can find information about me, a short bio for events, as well as an overview of previous and upcoming work.
Currently, I work full time as a web3 creator, writer, and operations specialist. Most recently I worked at Mirror, as their Community and Growth Lead. During my time at Mirror I lead customer support, user interviews, and creator partnerships.
My work navigates and addresses the challenges at the intersection of community, technology, and organizational development. In addition, I work as a coach for community-centered start-ups and as an advisor for selected clients.
The focus of my work stems from a nagging question that I have not been able to let go for almost 15 years: ‘How do organizations work?’. The question was first uncovered while counting screws at my uncle's hardware store. (Ask me about the story!)
The exploration of this questions has led to work in a wide range of sectors: FMCG, financial sector, manufacturing, SaaS and pharmaceuticals. The work has also taken me across the US and to many continents (Europe, Indonesia, Japan, Australia).
Throughout my career I have come to the conclusion that transient collaboration between individual workers will form a large chunk of the future economy. This hypothesis forms the basis of my work approach and strategic vision.
Previously, I worked at multiple HR software companies, spent some years as a commercial strategy consultant, and graduated from university with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering.
In my spare time I enjoy reading science fiction, writing, and training for triathlons.
The companies and teams I’ve had the privilege to work with have nurtured a specific working style which has driven consistent success:
- Prioritize subject-matter expertise and empathy
- Embrace the networked world: immerse yourself, experiment and double-down on wins
- Have a strong bias towards action, non-stop curiosity and collaboration
- Above all else, help others succeed
You can use the following generic bio for introductions, conference programs, etc.
Rafa is an active community builder and consultant. He is best known for his dynamic partnership approach, experience in organization design and knowledge of trends in workforce structures.
Most recently, he has joined the web3 movement. Rafa supports online communities with operations, membership structures, and writing. He is also the founder of the Obras del País, a novel content company supporting local artisans in the Post-COVID digital-first world. Previously, he worked as a consultant advising clients on commercial strategy and as an Customer Engagement Leader for multiple HR software organizations.
Twitter: @rafathebuilder
External Profiles
Thread of Threads
Work in Progress
![[Brainstorm] Mirror DAO: Dynamic Delegation Governance Proposal](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/8a4BII8_iB4CRJ0Bwtp-QGcDLUJqIN8GA95hcAS6UD7pIc0Il2YQTn5vLGSqrAyFeMVqmLB82mQUVw=w1200-h630-p)
Other Writing about inspiration, web3 and HR
Podcasts and Presentations
Webinars
In February 2020, I took an 8 month career break. At that point I was unaware of the upcoming pandemic and its consequences. During the summer (July 2020) I decided to find a way to connect and give back to my community, especially trying to help those struggling with their businesses. I immersed myself in the history of Puerto Rican artisans and found some new interesting questions:
Why were high-quality artisans of the Island struggling?
Can we help artisans partner with digital creators in a win-win scenario?
Could we address discoverability and value communication issues?
As a result of these questions, I founded Obras del País, with a focus on creating a self-funding business which promotes local artisans. The project vision, approach, and solutions are based on >100 hours of field interviews with artisans and local administrators.
The initiative's mission consists of:
- Providing a free content creation service to 100 artisans
- Funding the work through 1,000 true-fans as subscribers
- Finding 10 corporate partnerships to support promotion and funding
Our team's ambition is to build a native 'API' for the artisan market, leveraging the power of individuals and cultural heritage.
The model we're pursuing in the short term can be somewhat understood by the following image:
Here you can find an overview of my advisory focus and approach to consulting. Currently I am employed full time, but will consider engagements depending on the context and availability.
Over the years, I've supported clients with go-to-market strategy advice, customer journey led commercial strategy, and data-driven organization design work (incl. operating model definition). The bulk of my work focuses on empowering of small teams to address large missions, supported by specialized technology. You can find a summary of common resources influencing my perspectives appended.
In my career as a consultant I have lead small specialized teams with technology enablers. Teams were often between 2-5 people, supported by technologies that enabled scale: custom programming and specialized analytics SaaS. During the engagements I have served as the engagement lead, strategic advisor, approach architect, and analyst.
For upcoming engagements, you can expect 1:1 working sessions testing underlying beliefs, decision models and the rigor of current thinking. Following this immersion, the expectation is that we work together on a series of experiments to test hypothesis against the current reality of your organization and market.
Venkatesh Rao's Breaking Smart essay "Tinkering versus Goals" provides a good description of the processes I seek to enable:
Ideally, working arrangements are ongoing conversations via email/chat interactions, with 1:1 sessions of 1-3 hours once or twice per month (more or less often depending on the pace of experiments). In some cases, clients will invite a colleague or team member, or organize a half-day debate-style workshop. Outputs of each engagement usually include a summary note in the form of email.
Depending on the context, I will also consider leading or joining a team for a period of time.
1. Images of Organization (Gareth Morgan)
2. Seeing like a State (James Scott)
3. Data-Driven Org Design (Rupert Morrison)
4. The Art of Community (Charles Vogl)
5. Tribes (Seth Godin)
6. Reinventing Organisations (Frederic Laloux)
7. The Corporation That Changed the World (Nick Robins)
1. Art of Gig: https://artofgig.substack.com/p/into-the-yakverse
2. Breaking Smart: https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/
3. 1000 True Fans: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
4. Six economies of the internet: https://www.meatspacealgorithms.com/six-economies/amp/
5. A brief history of the corporation: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/
6. Influencers and Hype House: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/style/hype-house-los-angeles-tik-tok.html
7. Gig Economy Unions: https://qz.com/1809297/regulators-around-the-world-are-coming-for-the-gig-economy/
8. Passion Economy: https://a16z.com/2019/10/08/passion-economy/
STOLEN FROM thefutureofsocial.co — in progress of reading
🗞Proof of X (Julian Lehr, 2020)
🗞Signaling-as-a-Service (Julian Lehr, 2020)
🗞Come for an Action, Stay for the Community (Rebecca Kaden, 2019)
🗞Why Customer Network is the Next Big Thing that Every Startup Needs to Master (Alexis Kold, 2020)
🗞From Audiences to Communities (Web Smith, 2020)
🗞Key Metrics for the Passion Economy (Li Jin, 2020)
🗞100 True Fans (Li Jin, 2020)
🗞The Passion Economy and the Future of Work (Li Jin, 2019)
🗞Need a New Year Resolution ? Monetize Yourself (Sarah Nockel, 2020)
🗞Facebook Subscription Groups (Techcrunch, 2018)
🗞Backing IRL Social Clubs (Packy McCormick, 2020)
🗞Patreon Acquires Memberful, An Interview with Patreon CEO Jack Conte and Memberful CEO Drew Strojny (Stratechery, 2018)
🗞Mapping the Ecosystem of Community Tools (Commsor, 2020)
🗞The Next $1B Consumer Startup will be a Vertical Social Network (Justin & Olivia Moore, 2020)
🗞Come for the tool, stay for the network (Chris Dixon, 2015)
🗞1,000 True Fans (Kevin Kelly, 2008)
🗞The Guid to Unbundling Reddit (Greg Isenberg, 2020)
🗞How to Solve Cold-Start Problem for Social Products (Andrew Chen, 2014)
🗞A Primer on the Passion Economy (Hadrien Comte, 2020)
🗞Paid Communities (Dru Riley, 2020)
Building a Community Digital Garden (Rosie Sherry, 2020)
🎧Means of Creation Podcast (Li Jin & Nathan Baschez)
🎧Silicon Carne: La Passion Economy (in French) (Carlos Diaz)
🎧The Truth about 1000 True Fans + Pricing Our Attention (A16Z Podcast)
📭Means of Creation Newsletter (Li Jin & Nathan Baschez)
📭Li Jin's Newsletter (Li Jin)
Here you can find selected posts and articles I've written in the past year, highlighting key topics of conversation regarding how organizations are evolving, especially in the context of COVID.
There's a massive shift happening online. Are you feeling it?
Greg Isenberg had a fantastic post today about the emerging communities of the internet. He asked, which ones are blowing up, and suggested 3:
1. Rite of Passage (e.g. going to college, first job, moving, obtain X new product, buying a house)
2. Education with clear beginning and end (e.g. learn iOS, specialization programs like Google's IT offering)
3. Communities driven by charismatic leaders (e.g. large booming follower base on Twitter)
The response to Greg's post was fantastic, outlining several others to note:
4. Build and learn in public (e.g. me posting yesterday, NoCode, clusters on Twitter like @brandonthezhang), suggested by @stvngunn
5. Private groups augmenting in-person relationships (extended family chat groups, neighborhood groups, virtual pub trivia), suggested by @jesserhart
6. Guilds of independent makers (e.g. @Yakcollective, @IndiestackHQ)
Each of these is fostering another type of grouping:
7. The Collective: Coordinated creators with temporary shared goals or projects. The nascent, emerging trend can be seen in the rise of the 'collab' for those of you on Instagram.
Published on September 3, 2020
Quite often, customers of workforce management ask: "What is the future of work?"; Others might ask: "How will my function (like Customer Success) evolve over the next 5-10 years?" After exploring the question over the past few years, I think the answer lies at the intersection of three perspectives:
- The Fundamental Work: The deconstruction of employee base into activities
- The Creator Workforce: Jonathan Hillis' six economies of emerging online creators
- The Bundling Cycle: "There are only two ways to make money... one is to bundle and the other is to unbundle" - Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape
"What work in my organization will be executed by which online economy, in which bundle?"
I don't have the answer for anyone in particular, but have some theories as to the collectives which will emerge in the coming years. Note that these collectives are present in the 'cozy' corners of the internet, and will emerge to the mainstream in the coming years.
Feel free to follow me on twitter for more ideas @rafathebuilder
It is also worth understanding that each of these perspectives (work, creators, and bundling) applies to your workforce AND YOUR CUSTOMERS. We often forget that the client base also performs work for our companies (e.g. providing feedback and testing).
When thinking about the future of work we need to consider that customers are now breaking the fourth wall; Clients consume, pay AND participate in product design and testing.
My perspective: The future is collective; Communities will create; Creators will collaborate.
Some key considerations for your company:
- Community is not the same as an audience - How do you invest in community development?
- Coordinated creation by your customer base is not the same as community - Do your customers create? If not, why?
- Companies now have community leadership representation in their decision process - Do you? Think about the value...
- We will all learn from community driven companies, as they will be the fiercest competitors. Where is community on your strategy roadmap?
- Community exists internally AND externally. How does your employee community engage with your customer community?
- Companies will begin to partner and purchase organizations like 'newsletters' with high engagement to BUY a community. What newsletters are aligned to your company vision?
- Communities aren't built in a forced manner, they emerge from fertile ground. What approach are you taking?
- Communities are nurtured in synchronous and asynchronous events. Which ones?
Rethinking Curation (New Media Curation)
Homo Ludens, A study of the play-element in Culture (Johan Huizinga)
Gaming, Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Alexander R. Galloway)
Emissaries Guide to Worlding (Ian Cheng)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galexy
A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
Notes on the Synthesis of Form - Christopher Alexander
The Cluetrain Manifesto - Rick Levine
gregory bateson's steps toward an ecology of mind
christopher alexander's a timeless way of building
The secret life of trees
The nature of order (Christopher Alexander)
The sovereign individual
The Situationalists (Dérive)
![[FKPXLS] The Illusions of Free-to-Play](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.super.so%2F7c0ae78b-4328-4df4-a1ac-8e9c57aeca4c%2Fimages%2Fef1da1c0-429a-4959-bfeb-9da66024bc9f%2Ffb55d53d-ad88-4a7b-80c7-0fa8493c9ab7_1920x1080.png&w=3840&q=80)
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