Float: Growing Sustainably

The evolution of our mission and vision.

What drives us to do what we do collectively? It's a critical question with a complicated answer.

As the CEO of Float, my job is to set our company mission and vision—to define our North Star with clarity and purpose. To arrive at that answer, the exercise of repeatedly asking 'why?' until you can ask no more cuts to the core of intent:

• We provide a platform to plan, track, and manage your team's time. Why?
• To enable professional services teams to make better planning decisions. Why?
• To enable teams to optimize their workload, deliver great work, and make better hiring decisions. Why?
• So they can grow their company sustainably.

Our vision is to enable every professional services team to grow sustainably.

When I arrived at that core of why we do what we do, I realized it's a shared pursuit; one we strive for in our own company journey. The motivation for us to deliver on the vision for ourselves drives our vision for our customers.

When we founded Float in 2011, I'd spent more than a decade in the advertising industry. I'd burned through endless nights at my desk working on pitches, shipping campaigns, and sitting in on client conference calls. I was rarely home for dinner (I'd gotten to know the late-night Chipotle employees on a first-name basis).

There are systematic outcomes in the service industry: pricing models that incentivize overtime, and double-booking, pitches set up to overpromise and underdeliver. But for the most part, I worked with good people, trying to do great work. Underlying the operations were tools and processes that were ineffective at allocating work to the best available team members.

Today, 10 years on, this cycle still exists. According to the Float 2021 Global Agency Productivity Report, 34% of teams are working overtime to complete their assigned work. In any given month, 80% of teams are overbooked on projects. Yes, the acceleration of remote work has ushered in greater flexibility; however, it's come at a cost to work-life balance. The problem isn't exclusive to advertising agencies. It extends to consultants, accountants, lawyers, architects, etc.—the entire professional services industry, really.

We believe Float can help. With a shared view of project plans, accurate team availability, and real-time feedback on how long projects actually take to complete, every team can make better planning decisions. We believe Float is the best service available today to do just that, and it's only getting better.

In November, an email arrived from a customer in Australia that highlighted why this work matters:

"We were very close to having to let go quite a few of our guys here. We just had no visibility to measure what impact they were making in the business. COVID has been tough on everyone, and it was getting really close to having to let a lot of people go…what really helped was using Float. We finally had a way to understand what everyone was doing, and we didn't have to let anyone go in a time when a lot of companies did."

Behind Float is an incredibly talented team that gives me a lot of confidence that we can deliver on our vision. A team that's guided by a set of values and a shared vision to grow sustainably. If you'd like to join us on the journey, please apply for one of our open roles.

We've come a long way, but I truly feel like we're just getting started.

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