Connect

A digital gift economy for artists on the internet

Give

Co-founder & Creative Director

2011-08-08

—

2018-06-25

View Case Study

We looked at the world and found two things to be true: there was more music being made than ever, and artists were getting paid less than they had in the history of recorded music.

Johnny Rodgers and I worked on a service that answered these questions every Tuesday and one weekend a month for seven years.

Ambition

Build the gift economy for creativity on the internet.

Results

$28,000 given to artists, $32,000 received in gifts from users.
3 live events.
99% uptime for 7 years.

Role

Jointly responsible for all business research, strategy, planning, development, execution, management, and analysis. We approached everything with a focus on innovation and designing a system that was built for a new context rather than purely following precedent.
Solely responsible for creative direction and product design.

Team

Give was a partnership between Johnny Rodgers and me.

Johnny Rodgers

Founding Member, Slack

I’ve known Connor professionally since 2011. During that time we’ve been colleagues at a large software company, co-founders of a startup, and partners in creative exploration of the possibilities of technology. He has helped me elevate my own skills and ways of thinking about design and software (as I’ve pursued my own career as a founding employee at Slack).

Connor is one of the most creative, perceptive, and sensitive technology designers I’ve worked with. His aesthetic instincts are exceptional and his sense for “what works” is unfailing. Most of all, I’ve always been impressed with Connor’s ability to distill the essence of a given problem and focus on solutions and opportunities that extend from it, rather than getting caught in the weeds of trends, existing answers, or conventional thinking.