How informal’s freelance collective supports agencies

It’s no secret that the hardware ecosystem has been shaped by giants of the services world for years. Frog, IDEO, Fuseproject, Mindtribe: These are engineering and design firms that defined a generation of physical devices and spurred the careers of engineers and designers throughout the ecosystem. But just like the startups and enterprises they support, these firms face challenges hiring and retaining stellar talent, especially when times get tough — like they are today. That’s why Sam and I have made a concerted effort to bring the informal community to agencies, so they can get access to flexible hardware talent when they need them, for as long as they need them, without shouldering the costs of retaining them during lean times.

Today, in addition to working with companies directly, informal supports engineering, design, and marketing agencies that serve the hardware community. These firms get access to the same great hardware professionals every other informal client does, and to the same infrastructure for running projects, managing resources, and ensuring great outcomes for everyone involved. 

Take Tomorrow Lab, for example. We’ve known Tomorrow Lab’s founders Ted and Peppin for years, and last year started supporting them with access to affordable, flexible, expert engineering talent to complement their in-house team. Or take Whipsaw, the award winning industrial design firm. When their in-house engineering and design teams need specialized subject matter experts, they call up informal.  

So how does informal work with agencies, studios, and firms? We help them retain, grow, and extend. 

Retain

The last two years have been brutal for hardware services businesses. Big tech’s mass layoffs have resulted in frozen contracts and terminated projects for big and small firms alike, creating ripple effects in the service industry that have driven many agencies to lay off entire departments. Layoffs and reductions in force are terrible for talent and horrible for the ecosystem—and they’re entirely avoidable. By working with informal, firms can seamlessly transition their teams into freelance projects, ensuring they have work to keep them busy, without the firm incurring salaries and benefits they can’t afford during lean times. When times improve and more work at the firm is available for their team, they can pull them back in on-demand. 

Grow

In lean times, just as in plentiful times, agencies need to be ready to jump on opportunities and new projects. That’s difficult to do when they don’t already have access to the skills and professionals to get the work done. informal puts hundreds of senior, highly experienced professionals at a firm’s fingertips, ready to jump in on new projects when they’re needed, and engage in other projects through informal when they aren’t. 

From quickly growing the size of in-house teams to meet demand to augmenting existing teams with expertise that doesn’t make sense to have on salary, informal makes it super easy to get the people an agency needs when they need them so they can rise to new challenges. That applies to both client-facing work and internal initiatives; one way we love to work with firms is expanding their in-house marketing, business development, and creative capabilities so they can land more work and grow. 

Extend

informal members have decades of experience building hardware products and businesses, and most are experienced managers and team leaders. One key way firms engage with informal is to to help super charge their internal teams, not just with fresh talent, but with coaching and guidance that makes an internal team more effective and experienced. We’ve paired former heads of hardware with less experienced engineering teams at agencies to coach and guide those teams to be more effective and innovative. 

When the teams reach a point where they can go off on their own, the informal members step aside, having helped another agency become that much more capable. If in that time the agency isn’t right for the client, or the client isn’t ready for what the agency can offer, the agency can refer them to informal to push forward. When the project reaches a point when it’s ready for the agency, we’ll send it back to them to take it past the finish line. It’s like having a safety net for clients and team members alike. 

Agencies and firms that work with us also get access to our extensive global supplier and vendor network, with which they can make anything from consumer electronics to electric vehicles. The same resources and network effects informal makes available to inventors, startups, and corporations are available to supercharge firms, too. Because at the end of the day, informal exists to build a stronger, more resilient hardware ecosystem. And firms are a key part of that. 

Hardware Meetups

Lastly, even if engaging informal members or leveraging informal’s network to retain talent isn’t right for a firm, they can always participate in one (or many) of the hundreds of Hardware Meetups we help organize in cities around the world each year. From sponsoring to hosting Hardware Meetups, there are multiple ways for firms to tap into the thousands of hardware professionals we reach every month for business development, recruiting, and marketing. Hundreds already have over the years, from Spanner hosting multiple Hardware Meetups in San Jose, CA, to Simplexity and NexPCB sponsoring our very first San Diego Hardware Meetup back in 2023 (and Simplexity sponsoring another with Seacomp just last month). 

Interested in exploring how informal can support your firm? Check out our capabilities deck for agencies here and email hello@informal.cc for a free consultation.