Business (Un)usual

These days early-stage founders assume they need to build their own technology. It's the default. Hiring a CTO seems to be the first thing people do. But what does that assumption actually cost: in money, in flexibility, in the attention you pull away from the mission you set out to solve? In this episode, I sit down with Rob, our Tech Lead (or CTO) at Library of Things, for something of a public...

Why is it more normal to throw something away than to fix it? In this episode, I talk with Jamie Hillier, our Thing Lead at Library of Things, about why that is and what another way looks like. Over the years, Jamie has made repair central to how Library of Things operates, quietly building a template that other businesses could follow. We dig into the real story behind broken things: why planned...

So you say that your business has a mission, one that goes beyond shareholder value. But how do you make sure that happens when push comes to shove? Can you make your mission unbreakable: one that’s able to survive investment, growth, an exit or life beyond the founders? In this episode, co-founder Emma Shaw and I talk about why ownership structure isn’t a legal detail, but a design decision about...

This first episode explores the question behind Library of Things. Together with my co-founder, Bex Trevalyan, we tell our origin story.  Not only why and how we started in 2014, but why we built it differently from business as usual. Like our members, we decided we didn't need to own everything.  We didn't trademark. We shared our model with our peers before we'd figured it all out, wit...

Hosted by Sophia Wyatt, co-founder of Library of Things, this podcast examines the assumptions we accept about how business should work. And asks: what if there's another way? Library of Things started in 2014 as a grassroots experiment that became a globally recognised pioneer of sharing and the circular economy.  A decade on, we're steward-owned, mission-locked, and still asking uncomf...