Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

The Power of Trust
Learnings from Six Years of Building
a Global Community of Young Leaders

Innovations Case Narrative:
Sandbox

Sandbox is the leading global community for exceptional young changemakers. Él
exists to provide every young doer with a trusted group of peers and a place to
learn from, connect with, and support one another. Sandbox counts over 1,000
members from a variety of backgrounds and has active hubs in 31 cities worldwide.
Sandboxers and their work have been featured on the front pages of Wired, Fast
Compañía, Forbes, and the Boston Globe, and have been covered in the New York
Times, the Washington Post, Cª, and Vogue, as well as on CNN, ABC, and many
other media channels.

HOW IT ALL STARTED, A LONG, LONG TIME AGO . . .

The two of us have been working together since we were 15. That’s when the idea
behind Sandbox first emerged. While we were in high school, we were both deeply
engaged in Swiss student politics, as was Antoine Verdon, who would become a
Sandbox co-founder and its first CEO. Together we organized a series of work-
shops for student activists from across the country where we met many people like
ourselves—full of ideas and ambition to build things and create change in the
world.

After graduating from high school, we continued to work together, y
became interested in entrepreneurship. We ran a bar on a boat, organized job fairs
at our university, and eventually started an event management company together.
Unos años despues, at a reunion of our student politics friends, we realized that many
of them had taken similar paths. The raw ambition of our high school years had
turned into actual projects. People had started companies, gone into politics,
moved into leadership positions. They were shaping the world around them. En
this moment we asked ourselves: Where will these people be five, ten, 30 años
from now? Will they still have that fire we saw in them in high school? Will they
still be active and building things?

That’s when the idea of Sandbox was born. We were convinced that the active
young doers of today will probably still be active 30 years from now and we asked

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger are the Co-founders of Sandbox.

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

ourselves: What if we could create lifelong friendships with the fellow misfits of
this world and build things together for the rest of our lives? What would the world
look like if the leaders of tomorrow could meet now, instead of 30 years from now?
What would our collective journeys look like if we could support each other on the
way, learn from each other, and build things together?

SANDBOX, SINCE YEAR ONE

Sandbox evolved in many ways during its first six years and became a community
more by accident than by plan. We went through four phases.

Phase one was a global conference that never got off the ground.

We had a background in event management, so our original plan was to organize
a large conference with corporate sponsors, who would pay for amazing young
people to come together—we were imagining a World Economic Forum for the
under-30 crowd. There was just one tiny problem: timing. We started working on
the conference idea in 2008, just as the financial crisis was unfolding. It soon
became clear that our plan to find sponsors would not work. We had to find anoth-
er way.

Phase two was small dinners.

Though we couldn’t afford to host a large conference, we kept bumping into amaz-
ing young doers who we thought would be perfect Sandboxers. So, to build rela-
tionships with them we started putting together small informal dinners in Zurich
and in any other city we traveled to. Fabian moved to New York City and started
organizing dinners there. Christian Busch, who would become another cofounder,
started hosting dinners in London. Our friend Björn Herrmann started doing so
in San Francisco. The feedback was very clear: people loved hanging out with like
minded peers, and they wanted more of it. But what more could we offer them?

Phase three was creating a framework for a community.

We realized that while the bottom-up dynamic we saw happening in cities across
the world was fantastic, it also created confusion. What did it mean to be attend-
ing one of these dinners? Was everyone automatically a member of Sandbox? Y,
what did it mean to be a member?

This gave us a key insight into community-building that is still at the core of
how Sandbox operates. If we wanted to connect these people to each other more
than just once or twice and actually turn them from a group of nice strangers into
a close-knit group of friends who will spend years, even a lifetime, together, we had
to provide a structure with five simple but essential ingredients.

First we needed a framework to define who is inside—and outside—the commu-
nity. As much as we loved bringing inspiring people to the table, we had to mark
our boundaries clearly. So, in early 2009, we developed our first selection process

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

The Power of Trust

for any potential member. We also provided accepted members with an online
directory so they could see who else was “in.”

En segundo lugar, we needed to define our purpose. We were truly enjoying connecting
gente, but we realized that our original intention of simply bringing them togeth-
er wasn’t enough reason for a community to exist, as it wouldn’t keep people’s
excitement up over time. Thus we had to define our higher objective for Sandbox:
to meet and learn from extraordinary peers and support each other.

We also needed a transparent global standard for evaluating new members. En
primero, every inspiring young person we met became a new Sandboxer, but we real-
ized it was important for members to understand why they had been selected—
and why their peers were. We decided that application decisions should be influ-
enced by both a local and a global perspective, with the ultimate approval always
coming from the global headquarters. This ensured that member applications in
Bangalore were comparable to those in Mexico City, and it let people feel they were
in this group for a good reason.

And that meant we needed clear expectations. We wanted our members to do
more than just join the community. We wanted them to be active members and
contribute: the more they did, the more valuable the community would be. Nosotros
have learned to be very frank about what we expect of new members, and we make
them sign a social contract that states both what they can expect from Sandbox and
what Sandbox expects from them.

Y, finalmente, Sandbox needed rhythm. People are usually excited when they join
a new community, but they only start taking it seriously once they realize it is more
than a one-off event, and that activities and events happen regularly and pre-
dictably. So we saw that, rather than organizing four events one month and noth-
ing for the next three months, it was much better to pace our activities over time.
At some point we started to develop a regular monthly newsletter for all our mem-
beres, to give them a sense of constancy and predictability.

Phase four was moving to a global scale.

At first we built Sandbox chapters (we call them hubs) in places closest to us or in
places where we had close connections, mostly in Europe and the United States.
But our ambition is for Sandbox to operate in any major city in the world. In order
to scale on a truly global level, we have learned to pay attention to three points.

Primero, we defined roles for people who want to help us expand. We have been very
fortunate to be supported by Sandbox ambassadors, members who volunteer to
run Sandbox at a local level. From the very beginning, fellow Sandboxers were
approaching us offering to bring the community to their city. Over time we have
learned that it is key to create a specific role for our volunteer supporters.
Ambassadors sign up for a one-year commitment and can consider remaining in
the role after that first year. We set goals together with them.

Segundo, we focus on critical mass. When we started out, we would welcome
Sandboxers anywhere in the world, as long as they fit the application criteria. Encima

innovaciones / volumen 8, number 3/4

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

tiempo, we started to see the value of critical mass. Instead of having five members in
40 cities, we would do better to have 40 members in five cities. Por qué? While we
were proud to have a presence in many countries across the world, the actual com-
munity experience was mostly shaped on a local level. For that to happen, nosotros necesitamos-
ed at least 20 people on the ground, so they could meet and spend time together.
And we saw that each city has a different flavor. It seems obvious in retrospect,
but it took us a while to realize how beautifully different people are across the
world. Therefore our Sandbox chapter in Beijing needs to have a different way of
doing things than the one in Berlin. We now provide a simple global framework
that any Sandbox hub can use, and then let every hub embrace its local character
and fill it with the activities that fit best.

HOW A COMMUNITY LIKE SANDBOX
CREATES TANGIBLE VALUE FOR ITS MEMBERS

The main value of any community lies in the deep and trusted friendships between
gente, relationships we hope will last forever. But communities are inherently
intangible: how can anyone quantify the quality of relationships? While most of us
understand the power of long-term friendships, the short-term benefits are not
always so obvious. So, how is a community like Sandbox helping its members? Are
we truly supporting our members on a day-to-day basis, or is it merely fun to hang
out with amazing peers? The two of us have asked us this question many, muchos
times and the five points below are nuggets of how a community like Sandbox can
truly accelerate its members, even in the short term. We believe these ideas apply
not just to our organization but to curated, global, peer-to-peer communities in
general.

Provide moral support. Beyond everything we found that surrounding oneself
with a group of peers makes it easier to deal with the many stressful and frustrat-
ing situations involved in building a new company or project. Personally, tenemos
found that fellow Sandboxers have been able to relate to the madness of entrepre-
neurship in ways that most other people don’t. We have also found that spending
time with Sandboxers makes us dream bigger. If you’re constantly around friends
who talk about big and crazy ideas, suddenly your next idea seems much more fea-
sible.

Help members search for people or expertise. We have observed that many
Sandboxers use the community as an effective way to search for contacts. Ellos
might be looking for people at specific organizations, experts within specific
domains of expertise, local door openers, or people to hire. In this connected
world, it is astonishing how many people not only search for entry points through
the community but also find them. Often someone knows someone, and that leads
them to the person they need. One of the more memorable searches in Sandbox
history was initiated by Kyra Maya Phillips, a Sandboxer based in London, OMS
was looking for a possible connection to Somali pirates. Writing a book about the

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

The Power of Trust

underground economy, she wanted to cover Somali pirates. Through Sandbox, she
found them.

Offer a global home. Members of our community tend to travel a lot, and many
of them pass through the world’s major innovation hubs and capitals. Sandbox
provides them with a trusted home in places where they might not yet know any-
uno. Our ambassadors act as door openers and connectors and help identify the
right people on the ground in a new city. A few years ago, when we surveyed mem-
bers on what they like most about Sandbox, one of the most common answers was
that they loved to stay on other Sandboxers’ couches when they were traveling.
What better way to connect on a meaningful level than to stay with each other?

Provide spread and exposure. Getting something off the ground is hard and get-
ting attention for your early-stage, semibuilt project is even harder. Tenemos
noticed how the community generously helps to spread information and give
exposure to members’ projects. Curiosamente, community members are even will-
ing to share information (Por ejemplo, on their Facebook walls or Twitter feeds)
about the projects of people they hardly know, simply because they are members
of the same organization. Por otro lado, Sandbox has also become an efficient
way of spreading opportunities, such as open job positions or business plan com-
petitions.

Provide a forum for feedback and learning. We also noticed that Sandbox is a
great place for people to learn from their peers. The questions cover a very broad
spectrum: Por un lado, people are asking for feedback on their ideas and proj-
etc., but on the other hand we see that members share difficult everyday situations
and ask for collective input on how other people deal with them, from managing
failure anxiety to explaining to your parents what it is you actually do.

LESSONS FROM BUILDING A COMMUNITY

Starting a community—though it was something of an accident—is the best thing
that ever happened to us. Aquí, quickly, are a few lessons we have learned from the
proceso, with more detail below.
(cid:2)(cid:1)Communities are not networks; they function more like families.
(cid:2)(cid:1)Communities are defined by trust and shared values.
(cid:2)(cid:1)Communities work best when the experience has a clear beginning and end, con

powerful rituals in between.

(cid:2)(cid:1) Technology is only a means to an end, and local face-to-face interaction is

absolutely crucial for an active community.

(cid:2)(cid:1)Figuring out the business model for a community is really, really hard.

A community is not a network—it’s a family.

We learned over the years that there is a huge difference between a community and
a network. A (humano) network is a group of people who have connections to each
otro. These relationships often exist for a specific reason; Por ejemplo, to exchange
best practices within the same industry. But a community is different: its members

innovaciones / volumen 8, number 3/4

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

come together around shared values and ideals, and they build a common identi-
ty. It’s about deep and meaningful relationships, not connections or “contacts.” So,
in many ways, a community works like a family.

Our favorite example to illustrate this comes from our hub in Washington,
D.C. When our Sandbox ambassador Kalsoom Lakhani got married, two of the
tables at the reception were reserved for Sandboxers. This is still one of our proud-
est moments: a community is not just people you have met but people you would
invite to share intimate moments.

Successful communities are built on trust.

Communities are far more powerful than networks because members trust each
otro. Trust is the strongest enabler of deep and lasting friendships. People are will-
ing to open up more. They are willing to help each other more. They want to spend
more time together. They will trust other members of the same tribe, even if they
have never met. And they form more meaningful relationships. While plenty of
organizations provide monetary capital to bring young doers forward, we believe
that trust is just as valuable and powerful as money in bringing people, and their
ideas, adelante.

Creating trust is the most important—and hardest—task of any community-
builder. It comes from measures like a consistent and clear application process with
equally high expectations of all members. It comes from clearly outlining what
members can expect and what is expected from them. It comes from consistency
and rhythm. It comes from being transparent and clear about the goals and vision
of the community. And it comes from sharing genuine values.

Values make all the difference.

Many communities out there have members with amazing achievements. How is
Sandbox different? Many members have told us that it’s our focus—and our
emphasis—on values. We like to describe Sandbox as a family and believe that, como
every family, we need a shared set of beliefs.

Since starting Sandbox, the two of us have tried to infuse the community with
the following key values: humility, vulnerability, and a sense of humor and human-
idad. Why these three? Everyone at Sandbox is extraordinarily accomplished.
Everyone is hustling and working hard on their next big idea. But in order to truly
connect and bond, we have to leave all that behind and just be human. We have to
listen. We have to respect the other humans in the community. We have to stay
curious. And we have to accept that, sometimes, we say and do totally ridiculous
cosas.

Strong communities have a beginning, an end, and powerful rituals.

When we started with Sandbox, there was no beginning and no real end to the
experience of being a Sandboxer. As a result, the initial excitement among new
Sandboxers would decrease over time and members would disengage. To address

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

The Power of Trust

este, en 2011, our dear friend and long-time New York City ambassador, Niamh
abrazos, working with Fabian, pioneered the Sandbox class model. It’s very simple.
Sandboxers are accepted in classes of around 20 people every 12 meses, en cambio
of on an individual and rolling basis. We realized that as a community we could
learn a lot from the classic timeline of a university and started to model our expe-
rience accordingly: our classes start with a kick-off event, followed by three years
of shared experiences, including local retreats and global summits. Members then
“graduate” from Sandbox. Since we introduced the class model in New York, nosotros
have started to implement it in more of our hubs and think it has worked very well
so far. What we haven’t answered yet is how members, once they have graduated
from a class, will continue to be involved in Sandbox. A strong alumni communi-
ty is crucial for the long-term success of Sandbox, but we haven’t yet figured out
how to provide this without having to run two communities at the same time.

We are a micro-global community.

Initially, our community grew organically all over the world. We accepted mem-
bers wherever we found amazing people, but we saw we would need critical mass
on a local level if we were to thrive. So we decided to accept applications only from
people in hubs where we already had a presence, or wanted to build one. This let
us provide both global relationships and a local community at the same time. El
American writer and professor Clay Shirky termed our approach “micro-global”:
while members feel they belong to a global family, they create their strongest rela-
tionships on a local level.

This approach of global and local (or top-down and bottom-up) is also at play
in other ways: Sandbox has global headquarters with a full-time staff that provides
constant activity, apoyo, and communication, and coordinates applications to
ensure that members are on an equally high level across the globe. En el otro
mano, we have a wonderful group of local volunteer ambassadors who run their
Sandbox chapters. We found that having two to three ambassadors per city allowed
us to create an intensive experience for our members on the ground. This balance
of top-down and bottom-up has worked well so far, but the two are in a constant
negotiation process. As Sandbox matures as an organization, we expect the bot-
tom-up part to become stronger.

The more informal, the better.

Organizations, including communities, tend to become more formal in their inter-
actions over time—people see it as an expression of professionalism. Creemos
the opposite is true, and have tried to encourage less formality whenever possible.
People interact very differently in an informal setting. Informal is more human.
We encourage our members to host events at their homes. We discourage the use
of nametags, business cards, and anything else that reminds us of traditional “net-
working.” We want our members to discuss not what they do but who they are,
what they want to achieve, and what challenges they face on their way. This helps

innovaciones / volumen 8, number 3/4

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

our conversations to be more focused and meaningful; people discuss actual issues
instead of collecting connections.

True diversity is powerful.

Fabian likes to joke that the easiest community to build would be one for white
male tech entrepreneurs. They are very easy for us to find. But we realized early on
that true diversity is incredibly powerful. No matter if the entrepreneur is female
or male, or if they are working in politics, academia, diseño, social entrepreneur-
barco, or technology, most young doers are facing the same challenges. Their differ-
ent perspectives enable them to grow faster and open up new horizons. It also
makes it easier to focus on building true friendships rather than “professional”
connections.

The more interesting the audience at an event, the more interactive it should
ser.

We suffer from conference fatigue, and it seems many others do too. We don’t want
to spend our days in a windowless conference room at a hotel near an airport, lis-
tening to mediocre keynote speakers. En 2011, when Fabian organized the Sandbox
Transamerica Expedition in Mexico—our first larger event—he wanted it to be as
interactive as possible. So he developed an event format that has become key for
our events worldwide. As participants register, we ask them to suggest an hour-
long session about anything they would like to do—but it has to be interactive.
From all these suggestions, we curate an offering of sessions for the final agenda.
We prefer activities that encourage participants to work together, like cooking, colocar-
ting up camp, or building a bonfire. Again and again we have been blown away by
the human creativity that emerges when you let your audience lead parts of your
evento. At our 2012 Global Summit in Lisbon, the topics of sessions ranged from
comedy improv to how to pour a perfect pint of Guinness, how to write a love let-
ter, Finanzas 2.0, and the history of advertising.

For communities, technology is a means to an end.

For a long time we thought we had to create our own online social network that
would serve as the single way of communicating within the community. We start-
ed out with a customized community on a platform called Ning—and failed mis-
erably. Nico calls this the Facebook fallacy, and we think that many organizations
suffer from it. Because Facebook is the predominant social network, people tend
to develop platforms that mimic how it works, but for one specific community.
This approach almost never works: competing with Facebook on a technological
level is impossible, and getting people to use yet another platform is very difficult.
At Sandbox, we eventually realized that we should allow members to interact
on whatever platform they already use the most—and we would never have a uni-
fied platform. En cambio, Sandboxers today use a combination of Facebook groups,

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

The Power of Trust

mailing lists, Whatsapp groups, and even good old email to stay in touch with each
otro.

This is not to say that communities should never run their own platforms.
They should—simply because most of them need good data on their members to
maximize the value they create. This particular insight came to us way too slowly,
in part because neither of us has a tech background. Como resultado, Sandbox doesn’t
have very accurate data on its members, which is annoying for the members them-
selves (Por ejemplo, it’s hard to find all the other Sandboxers in the same city), y
it’s a huge problem for the organization.

Even communities need a business model.

Over the past four years, we have tried and discussed many business models and
revenue streams for Sandbox. Some have worked well, but we have not yet man-
aged to make the organization financially sustainable for the long term. That hap-
pened partly because we spent less time on this issue than we should have. Nosotros
believed—wrongly—that a successful community would inevitably lead to finan-
cial success. But it also happened because there are no obvious answers and few
people have figured out how to create sustainable business models for communi-
corbatas.

Every organization that is not entirely volunteer-run needs an income, and we
see several viable business models that can be built on top of the Sandbox commu-
nity. But two aspects are vital in any such model: it cannot exploit the community,
and it cannot create bias toward certain members (p.ej., those who are older, o
wealthier, or starting companies).

Income option 1: Membership contributions. We both have come to believe that
members should contribute financially. We wish we had started with membership
fees from day one; doing so establishes an expectation among members. But when
we started, we simply lacked the self-confidence to ask people to pay for what was,
at that point, an unproven model. It was only earlier this year (2013) that we did a
test run and found that voluntary monthly membership contributions are a great
way to go. Members can contribute according to their financial means, and accord-
ing to how much value they are currently gaining from the community.
Además, encouraging contributions raises both the perceived value of the
community and the activity level of individual members.

Income option 2: Innovation consulting. Instead of soliciting contributions from
miembros, Sandbox started with a consulting business model that Nico developed
together with Thomas Sevcik of Arthesia, a key advisor and then a board member.
For several years we supported companies, mostly large multinationals, in devel-
oping innovative strategies. After doing some initial research, we would assemble
a group of Sandboxers for a workshop with the client, and then provide a final
report with results. The participation of Sandboxers was of course always volun-
tary (and paid). This model worked very well; among many others, we consulted

innovaciones / volumen 8, number 3/4

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

with Volkswagen, UBS, and Frankfurt Airport. Under Nico’s leadership, Sandbox
became profitable.

But the consulting came with significant downsides. We felt that the consult-
ing projects were drawing our time away from what actually mattered: creating
value for the community. So, we eventually decided to stop consulting and focus
fully on building community. In retrospect, this was not a wise decision. Granted,
consulting required a large time commitment from our headquarters and only
involved a small subset of members. But if you’re a startup and you have a business
model that works, you should stick to it until you’re certain you’ve found some-
thing better.

Income option 3: Event partnerships. Given our background in event manage-
mento, we hoped to replace the revenue from consulting with revenue from events,
and began working on our first Global Summit. This worked quite well, and we
found great partners that supported us financially, easing the burden on our mem-
beres. But big events usually need to happen consistently over several years to
become profitable, and so far, Sandbox events have not become a major source of
income.

Other options and the way forward. Over time, we have had many other ideas
for revenue sources for Sandbox, from an investment fund, to a speaker agency, a
an educational initiative. Some of these clearly have potential, but none of them is
a silver bullet, the one solution that will provide all the revenue we need. Most like-
ly, Sandbox will rely on several revenue sources in the future. From our experience,
we think such sources are likely to succeed if they follow three basic principles.
They should be aligned with our vision and mission. They should add value for
members and the community as a whole, rather than taking value away. (Para
ejemplo, Sandbox should never sell members’ data.) And they should be simple to
implement and not require massive additional overhead.

LESSONS ABOUT BUILDING A STARTUP

Sandbox is also a startup, and much of what we’ve learned can be applied to other
startups, whether they’re communities or other types of organizations. The quick
summary first:
(cid:2)(cid:1) Start, early on, to think about the most appropriate structure and governance

modelo. Not everyone needs to be a for-profit.

(cid:2)(cid:1)Look within for top talent.
(cid:2)(cid:1)Have a team of full-time people in one location.
(cid:2)(cid:1)Think about who invests in you.

Sandbox should have been a nonprofit.

We started Sandbox as a for-profit because we knew how to do that and figured it
was easiest. But we had always wanted it to be an organization that would be
around forever, and we didn’t spend enough time thinking about the opportunities
and constraints of a for-profit versus a nonprofit structure. Knowing what we know

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

The Power of Trust

now about funding options and hybrid structures, we’d begin by building Sandbox
as a nonprofit and potentially add a for-profit arm at a later point. Starting as a
nonprofit most likely would have limited our access to funding early on, but it
would have allowed us to do at least three key things: focus on our core mission of
building an exceptional community, create more stable governance structures, y
involve our members more deeply in the process. That’s why we are excited to see
the new team experimenting with different ways to get member input.

Look within for talent.

We were and are incredibly lucky to work with a series of amazing community
managers over the last five years. But we struggled for a long time to attract and
retain top talent for Sandbox beyond the founding team—even though we had
access to an amazing community of incredibly talented people.

We see several reasons for this. Primero, we lacked the self-confidence to believe
that all the amazing people who wanted to join Sandbox could also be interested
in working for us. As strange as this may sound now, it took us quite a while to see
the advantages of recruiting from within our existing pool of fabulous members.
Segundo, we didn’t do a very good job of managing the expectations of the peo-
ple we brought on to the team. We emphasized rewards—like good pay, or stabili-
ty, or decision-making power—and then often could not deliver. For the first two,
the reason was simply that we were a struggling startup. The third one involved a
complicated situation within the founding team. We had brought on four addition-
al cofounders, which made it hard to extend decisionmaking power to even more
hires.

We did eventually come around to bringing Sandbox members onto the team.
Daniel Karpantschof, who had been a member for several years, worked with Nico
in New York, and today Sandbox is led by two former ambassadors: John Egan and
Alex Terrien. They have done tremendous work in their hubs (Dublin and Paris,
respectivamente), and we are very proud to see them lead the organization today.

You need a full-time team working out of one location.

For a long time, the Sandbox cofounders were working from as many as four dif-
ferent locations, and most were working part-time. This situation developed for
several reasons. Some founders were working on other projects and companies,
and we couldn’t pay everybody to work full-time. And being a global community,
we thought it would be helpful to have the cofounders spread out around the
world.

This turned out to be a mistake. It took us too long to realize that distributed
teams don’t work when you’re building a new organization. Everyone has to be in
the same room and at the same table. Having people in different places and work-
ing part time, means the team members feel too entitled and not committed
suficiente. It slows down the decisionmaking process, and people feel left out and
become territorial. People spend a lot of time making sure that everyone has the

innovaciones / volumen 8, number 3/4

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023

Fabian Pfortmüller and Nico Luchsinger

same information, instead of focusing on building new things. With a team as dis-
tributed as ours, it was hard to build a good working culture. When we finally
moved operations to one place (first Zurich, then New York, and now London), nosotros
got things done a lot faster with a lot less people power.

There are investors who like you, and there are investors who like your
negocio.

The first group tends to be friends and family, who believe in you and personally
want to support you. The second group includes the “professional” venture capital-
ists who see potential in your idea. The two have very little in common. Obviamente,
both groups have an interest in making a profit from their investment and thus
want to see the company they’re investing in succeed. But the first group is mostly
concerned with seeing constant progress and development. They are interested in
what happens in your company on a monthly basis, but they have a very flexible
time horizon for their liquidity event. En cambio, the professional investors are
mainly concerned with their path to liquidity. Simply showing them “activity”
doesn’t work—what they need is a clear, long-term view to sustainability and prof-
itability. If you can’t offer that (todavía), you should hold off on bringing in additional
investors. Taking someone’s money is a bit like getting married: it can be a wonder-
ful thing but it is also a serious commitment, and once you are in you have to make
it work.

THE WAY FORWARD

Over the last five years we’ve made many mistakes, and Sandbox still faces several
challenges, from how to become sustainable to how to engage members over
longer periods of time. But we are still incredibly humbled (and a bit proud) to see
that so many amazing people have joined Sandbox and have turned it into a unique
comunidad. Y, with John Egan and Alex Terrien, we are thrilled to have an
exceptional leadership team that knows, lives, and breathes Sandbox.

Since starting Sandbox, we have met many community builders who are facing
similar challenges to ours. We hope that our learnings outlined here will be help-
ful to anyone who is building a community, and we look forward to learning not
just from Sandbox, but from communities around the world.

Last but not least, a word of thanks. We didn’t build Sandbox by ourselves.
Building this community has been a huge collaborative effort, and we are forever
grateful to the many people who helped us on our path, especially our many
ambassadors.

innovaciones / Accelerating Entrepreneurship

Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/8/3-4/43/705072/inov_a_00186.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023
Descargar PDF