Creative Ops at Startup Speed: Lessons from Superside

Fredrik Thomassen, co-founder and CEO of Superside, joins the show to unpack how startups can scale creative work without slowing down or burning out their teams. Superside is a subscription-based design company that helps fast-growing teams get high-quality creative at scale. In this conversation, Fredrik shares how he built a globally distributed team, why async collaboration beats real-time meetings, and what most startups get wrong when managing creative work. We also get into: Hiring in overlooked markets Building customer trust and employee cohesion across time zones Structuring creative operations like a product team Why treating designers as partners — not vendors — drives better outcomes If you're juggling growth and messaging or just trying to build creative capacity without the chaos, listen in. RUNTIME 44:58 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (2:30) “ You start out and think, ‘I can do this for four or five years,’ and all of a sudden, a decade has passed.” (4:32) Superside’s beta was popular, but “ it was a total mess behind the scenes.” (7:36) Why “ it felt like an obvious move to go to YC.” (11:15) “ We found product-market fit, and then kind of COVID hit at the same time.” (14:17) The biggest mistake Fredrik made while adding headcount in the early days (18:59) Working with a founder coach has been “scary, but also in a sense, very motivating.” (21:39) Fredrik lists his preferred Norwegian authors (25:29) Inside Superside’s pivot from freelancer marketplace to enterprise creative services (29:40) “ What's growing at the moment is AI-powered creative services for our enterprise customers.” (32:08) Quantifying the efficiency gai”s from using AI-enabled services (37:53) How Superside collaborates with clients to provide strategic services and production work (40:31) “ It's quite hard to build a lifestyle business.” (42:40) The one question he’d have to ask the CEO before accepting a job offer with an early-stage startup LINKS Fredrik Thomassen Haakon Heir Jing Venås Kjeldsen Superside Y Combinator Paul Graham essays Hunger, Knut Hamsun Jon Fosse Karl Ove Knausgård SUBSCRIBE 📥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7249143254363856897/ 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   Thanks for listening! – Walter.