The marketplace software company, limber, founded its app in 2017. Since then, they now have 6 people working hard in HQ and 15,000 limberers relishing the benefits of this.
Answering 10 questions about limber for us is Chris Sanderson, CEO and co-founder of limber.
1. In your own words – what do you do?
We enable a growing generation of slashies (e.g. barista/teacher/designer) to build an empowering worklife. Using limber, they can earn with genuine freedom, flexibility and variety; pay towards one, centralised pension; and build up their own reputation to take with them wherever they go.
2. What’s the most exciting thing about what you’re doing?
The lifestyle of the people using our app is awesome. One limberer shared their diary with us. It went something like this:
- Monday, Tuesday, barista shifts.
- Tuesday night, yoga/wellness teaching,
- Thursday, illustration in the day and cocktail tending at night.
- Friday to Sunday, surf instructing.
We want to help as many people live that life or their ideal version of it. We know that the “single use” career is on borrowed time and so, we get excited when people can put their middle finger up to it!
3. What are you most proud of so far?
I think as a team, we punch well above our weight. We’re just 6 people at HQ and we get a lot done. We have to make a lot of compromises, but I think we’re fantastic at focussing on the right things, even if it means other areas have to suffer. I long for the day where we’re worrying about the position of buttons or whether emoji A or B is the right one to create the most user delight. It’s just not the reality!
4. What have you found most difficult about being a startup?
Having to exist in the hyped bubble of the startup scene. Some days, we can raise our eyebrows and ignore it. Others, it gets the better of us and we find ourselves saying “they’re doing better than us”. The reality is, and this isn’t restricted to startups, you can’t spend your time comparing your reality to someone else’s polished external persona.
5. What would you do differently if you started now?
It’s hard to regret decisions – the mistakes we’ve made have been fundamental to who we are as a business. But, we wasted a lot of time trying to grow for growth’s sake. If we’d spent more time thinking about how to grow the right way, we’d be further on.
6. Where do you think you’ll be in 12 months?
There will be people on limber from all over Europe working as dog groomers/software engineers or snake milkers/graphic designers or lawyers/artists. We’ll be where we always are, in the background, cheering them on and trying to help more people to break free from a career they perhaps never wanted in the first place.
7. What tools/people/services/organisations from the cluster have helped you most?
From a personal perspective, I enjoy talking to other founders. When you get past much of the polished external persona that we all try and maintain, there’s a lot of great people in the same boat – making it up as they go along and trying not to have a breakdown.
From the cluster, TechSPARK does a great job of helping connect people and SETsquared really helped us on our way in the early days – especially with our first investment round. People like Andy Mulvenna, Gavin Eddy and Steve Vangasse have also been fantastic support along the way.
BPEC who provide a much needed, fair and user-friendly way to connect with potential investors. And finally, VC’s like ADV and Kindred are also doing a really good job of looking outside of London for opportunities and giving founders (whose only vice seems to be that they don’t work in Old Street) the time I think we deserve.
8. What’s the best thing about the Bristol & Bath tech cluster?
It’s a slightly kinder, slightly more ‘real’; slightly less obnoxious younger sibling to London.
9. Who will you be nominating for a SPARKie next year?
SNAP travel – A brilliant product, with a founder (Tom Ableman) not afraid to tell the truth – and do so smack bang in the middle of his website. His level of openness, faith in humanity and passion to back his vision to the hilt needs to be applauded.
10. Where can we find out more about you?
Email me at chris@limber.work if you have any thoughts, feelings, emotions. Otherwise, the limber website will be evolving a lot in the next couple of months as we release some big news – so keep an eye out for that.
Our social channels are going through a bit of a facelift thanks to Emily, one of our new joiners so, you should take a look at some of her great new content too.
Thanks to Chris for taking the time to talk to us about limber.
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