Brent Vartan runs Bullish, and he organizes the firm around a claim most agencies only put on a careers page: that good ideas come from anywhere and everyone is creative. He is specific about where that claim stops.

"Everybody talks about good ideas can come from everywhere and everyone is creative. Agreed," he says. "But, some people are better at it more often that others. And, not all the time. Some times, some people are better at it than others in different times. We run in a way that takes advantage of the humanity."

A bunch of eight-year-olds playing soccer

Bullish is two businesses under one name. One half is a venture fund that invests only in consumer businesses and made its name writing very small checks into Harry’s, Casper, Warby Parker and Peloton. The other half is a brand consultancy that runs research, strategy, design and advertising in house. Brent was a partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Deutsch before this.

The two halves exist because of each other. The strategy needs relatively small funds, small funds generate relatively little management fee, and the shortfall has to come from somewhere. "We can’t employ as many people as we do" on one alone, he says. "We have to operate both." The upside is a kind of built-in audit: "It’s basically like ambient, constant diligence on each other."

A firm selling both thinking and making has to stay small while doing more, so the lever is how much any one person can make. Bullish organizes around roles rather than departments and hires what Brent calls t-shaped talent: "people that are deep in one thing but can do two other things at a high level really well." Specialties lead and follow in turn, phase by phase. "We are very much a bunch of eight-year-olds playing soccer," he says. "We move together."

Good, fast, inexpensive, and a team effort

Once a year the consultancy puts out a call for a pre-launch or freshly launched brand in what Bullish calls a Brand Identity Crisis, and gives it a four-to-six week sprint at a tenth of what the firm normally charges. It doesn’t pay. That’s the point. "It’s not a money making endeavor for us," Brent says. "It’s about living in that moment — with a founder — where they get to see what a better brand can do for them and their business."

That sets four demands at once. "We want it to be good. We want it to be fast. We want it to be inexpensive. And — above all — we want it to be a team effort."

The usual way to make an identity cheap and fast is to make it thinner, and the usual way to make it good is to put fewer, more expensive hands on it for longer. Both push the work toward a small closed room, away from the everyone-in model Bullish is built on.

"We didn’t have to change how we worked"

Two things made FLORA usable inside that sprint.

The first is that it asked nothing of the org chart. "We didn’t have to change how we worked," Brent says. "It just became a new way to do a new thing."

The second is that everyone could be inside it at once. FLORA at Bullish is not a creative-department tool: "We have Designers, Conceptors, Writers using it. But we also have Strategist and Account people using. And we have Analysts and Investors using it." The specialists could stay in one place instead of trading files across a waterfall. "Creative led the way but we all interfaced in FLORA and even real-timed a few things in way we hadn’t done before."

Bullish has used FLORA, he says, "to turn everybody into a low level creative." He is careful about what that does and doesn’t mean. "It doesn’t mean that we’re putting out bad stuff. It just means that everybody’s making stuff. So we are, as I always dreamed we would be, way less siloed."

One of five tools in the tool shed

Brent’s own frame is plainer. Roughly "85% of the work we do starts in an AI based system — and FLORA is one of those 5 tools we have in the tool shed."

What it bought them is bandwidth. "We are getting to good work, faster. And, that is leaving us more time to push on it — on each other — in a healthy way to see if we can make it great."

Plenty didn’t move. The work still finishes in Figma. The talent hierarchy Brent opened with is still real, and nobody at Bullish got better at the thing they were already best at. He declines to oversell it. "I don’t mind looking like we’re experimenting at all."

"FLORA, in particular, is helping make everyone at Bullish more creative and more attuned to creativity (even the ‘Creatives’)."

Tighter systems make more flexible teams

Ask Brent what an outsider would miss about how Bullish works and he describes a shape. Four phases, five work-streams inside each, repeatable outputs, one specialty leading while another follows and then handing the lead over for the next phase.

"It sounds loose. It’s quite the opposite," he says. "It’s four-phases, five work-streams per, repeatable outputs. But, tighter systems are what make more flexible teams. That’s when ‘yes, if’ can happen. That’s when things get fun."