The way we build companies and products is shifting. Org charts are flattening, and the decisions landing on your desk are bigger and arriving faster. Calls that once required three layers of sign-off now need an answer from you by tomorrow. And let's be honest - none of us were trained for this.
I noticed this pattern while building communities at InVision and On Deck. The most powerful moments weren't in the formal sessions; they came over coffee afterwards, when one designer would casually mention how they'd solved the exact problem keeping another designer up at night.
That's when it clicked: whatever challenge you're facing, someone else has already cracked it. The trick is finding that person at the right moment.
So we started small, hand-matching senior designers who could help one another. When we found the right combinations, designers finally had a space where they could be completely honest about their challenges. Three years and hundreds of groups later, many still meet regularly.
But doing it manually meant we could only help a handful of people. That's why we're building Coho, which matches you with 4-6 peers facing your exact challenges. Each group becomes its own brain trust, where you solve real problems together. Our AI captures and organises the key insights from every conversation, turning each group's collective experience into a searchable knowledge base that helps you reach your next decision faster.
Our alpha is already helping senior designers from Meta, Spotify, and HubSpot make better calls, faster. So this spring, we're opening limited beta access to help more designers tackle these challenges together. Eventually we hope this extends beyond design too - after all, all of us are dealing with the same challenges at the same time.
We're a small team of designers, engineers, and AI experts who believe the best answers often live in other people's experiences. We're building the infrastructure to connect those dots.