[Progress Update] I'm resigning as a Business Manager

Sep 08, 2025

Hey everyone,
Many of you have probably seen it that way already, but it took me a while to collect the evidence, internally process, and articulate the consequences of stopping to represent Deep Work as a business. It feels like letting go of a weight I’ve been pushing around for very long. And also coming to terms with the truth, which feels uncomfortable and like stepping into the abyss.

I’ve recently started to describe Deep Work as a collective of creative experts in web3. And while I’m not sure what the future will bring, it’s better if it’s not carried by me.

Reflecting on the past years

In 2017, I learned that the Ethereum ecosystem has the potential to improve the technical infrastructure of our financial economy and decided to take a risk to fill the UX gap in an emerging industry lacking that skillset.

I was motivated by designing interfaces and teamed up with Charlie to start Deep Work as an agency, which ended up being very profitable. It provided paid, mostly meaningful work with unique working conditions to over 40 intrinsically motivated experts. I think we all agree that we had an awesome time working together.

Since 2023, Deep Work's agency business has started declining, and clients have mostly been interested in hiring in-house. This year, in 2025, I focused on turning around the business model, finding clients, and trying to bring back that awesome time, compromising on my personal financial sustainability and health. And the ROI on my effort was at best marginal. Thank you to everyone who helped, we learned a lot!

I have concluded that my role as a Business Manager is obsolete, and centralising the sourcing of business opportunities or trying to fix it is a sunk cost to me, so I stop worrying about it. Since I don't have any other active roles at Deep Work, there is no work left for me to do.

What's next?

The business might not work the way it did, but we are all still here. Thank you for being around. That means a lot to me. I don't know what's coming, but I mostly want to let go and see what emerges.

I updated our GitBook documentation with my process for sourcing clients, proposal writing, and selling.
I will reduce monthly progress updates to data/analytics (see below) and continue sharing more of my observations and journey on my personal Instagram and Substack.
I'm inviting you all to decide (until 12.09.25) what to do with Deep Work’s assets. You can fill out this Typeform, and I'll also schedule a call on Friday for our community calendar.
I’ll focus more on working with you all 1:1, and share invitations to workshops, events, and projects that could be fun to collaborate on.
I'm still interested in org design, complex social systems, and HCI, and see Deep Work as a playground for experimentation and research. I also want to be more part of your worlds and projects, so let me know how I can help.

What’s Deep Work’s constitution?

From what I know, here’s Deep Work currently consists of:

A collective of individuals with various skills, projects, and experience in web3
About $2,112.21 in the treasury
Social media following:
- Substack - 241 subscribers (about 40-50% readers per post)
- Twitter/X - 1,737 Followers (mostly designers and web3 people)
- Instagram - 808 followers (also mostly designers)
Software:
- Deep Teams
- Webflow, Calendly
- 1Password, and a bunch of other software subscriptions (I will cancel the ones I'm not using myself)
Website and case studies
GitBook documentation
Telegram (and a dormant Discord)

Should we start a small project to improve what's left? Throw an IRL party? Share the treasury funds to buy ice cream for everyone?

If you read this far and are interested in deciding what should happen with the list of assets above, you're hereby invited to leave your thoughts in this Typeform until Friday, Sept. 12th. Here’s a calendar invite if you’d like to join an online call to hang out with me and decide online.

Thank you for staying honest. I love you all, see you around.

Andrej