I often talk about CEO-to-CEO conversations, but I want to acknowledge that it isn’t always easy to schedule that chat. CEOs are often busy and at the breaking point watching efforts go sideways, in circles, or come to a complete halt. However, keeping an eye on the horizon and developing software products from an engineering perspective at all times is best practice, which means that sometimes you may need to bring in help.
CEOs — and investors or developers for that matter — can’t go it alone. I can say with confidence that you can exchange pain for real progress when you reach out to Modularis.
Moore Collective Partnership
This is the first step in a series of our partnership with Moore Collective, which all started with Joanna Williams taking a risk and reaching out for that initial conversation. She had interviewed other potential partners ahead of us, and they simply didn’t understand her or her vision. This left her doing everything by hand, which was a lot.
Joanna was kind enough to share details about the beginning of our partnerships from her perspective. And we wanted to share the value of this partnership from our perspective too. We hope it re-inspires anyone out there who’s hit a breaking point and needs reliable results.
Partnering in Alignment With Our Values
We’ve had our core values defined for years, and we’ve learned to live them and trust them. We use those values to help one another, and we also use our values as a filter to decide which clients we want to work with.
We prioritize working with high-integrity people — to speak plainly, life is too short to work with jerks.
Meeting Joanna Williams With Moore Collective
Joanna immediately struck me as someone who is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable in her space. She is a high-integrity individual who has that unique combination that only successful entrepreneurs have — confidence, grit, and humbleness.
We knew right away that we believed in Joanna’s vision. Maybe it’s my engineering background that has me attuned to this, but in any discipline in any area, there are timeless first principles that everything else is built on. Most people don’t keep these timeless fundamental principles in mind. You don’t necessarily need to be aware of these, but the most successful people look for these universal truths, and that’s what Joanna has found in her space.
Joanna has 20 years of experience in fashion manufacturing and she understands the fundamentals clearly. She is onto something deep and foundational in understanding the generational demands for Gen Z in fast fashion, along with other parallel markets.
She has taken fashion, effective and efficient manufacturing, and connected them with profitability and high-quality products. This is fast fashion, done right — and connecting that with a predicted need in the marketplace.
Why Our Software Development Partnership Works
The focus on finding, uncovering, and identifying timeless first principles in her industry is something that immediately attracted us to Joanna and Moore Collective.
If you want to change the world, these are the things you need to do.
Success requires you to balance an open mind, open heart, intuition and sensitivity. This is what is incredibly unique about Joanna; she has all of this and a hunger to understand.
When you have this kind of deep understanding of how the fundamentals are impacting what’s happening globally today, you, by definition, have a deeper and keener insight on the market dynamics than anyone else.
All of this makes me so excited about our collaboration. Working with someone who has these deep insights and is a truly good person aligns with our values as a company and mine as an individual.
We know our legacy will be measured by how well and how far we lift those we encounter.
Joanna is, in many ways, trying to do the exact same thing in the space she knows so well. She is uplifting the creators and individual manufacturers and everyone along the chain. This goal to lift people up and change the world from our standpoint is something we have in common and something we share.
On a similar path or just looking for similar results? Schedule time with A.J., and stay tuned for “Moore.”
Full Transcript: Joanna Williams | Moore Collective
Joanna talks about her path meeting A.J.
What challenges did Moore Collective face finding a software partner that “got it?”
I think I was looking for a tech partner for the better part of two years. I had demoed a lot of solutions, met a lot of CEOs, and to be honest, they were all quite cringy, and they thought what I was doing was frivolous. They didn’t understand.
You know, a lot of this has to do with creators on TikTok, because that’s where creators really originated because TikTok lowered the barrier to entry, so that all people can now become their own private production studio.
So they heard TikTok, and they dismissed whatever I was doing as a frivolous girls dance app. So I probably talked to over a hundred different companies. I don’t even remember how I found Modularis, but when I did and when A.J. and I first spoke, I honestly knew I was home.
Joanna talks about her first interaction with A.J.
What’s the one thing that made you think, “Modularis is on the level?”
I think that what struck me immediately was A.J.’s curiosity in an industry that he knows nothing about, you know?
And right off the bat, his questions were so insightful. He was really digging, you know, to find, he was trying to get the vision out of me.
He does that a lot too, which I very much appreciate. But he’s on an endless quest for, you know, doing the right thing, finding the answers, or helping me find my answers.
It was just a very different conversation. It was like having a conversation with a family member or a friend.
Joanna talks about recommending Modularis
Why would you recommend partnering with Modularis?
If anybody came to me and asked for help with a problem that needed a software solution, the only people I would direct them to is Modularis. It’s hard for me to explain how much detail they got out of my head. That, which is funny to say, because I’ve been building this on paper and in my head for four years, and they were able to simplify it, clarify it, automate it, and get a flywheel in motion immediately.
And they’re not fashion guys. So they had to learn and they’re not part of the creator economy, you know? So to learn all of this new industry jargon, and what it all means, and God, their passion and curiosity and their ability to make, not only make sense of it, but provide a solution. It’s, they’re magicians.
They’re just magicians. That’s all I have to say.