Shuttering Sixo

A short note on closing Sixo, the clients it served, the work it made possible, and what carries forward.

Sep 2017 • 392 words

When I started Sixo, the goal was to turn freelancing into something more durable and community-driven. It wasn't a traditional agency. At the same time, it wasn't a loose network of people passing work around. It was quite deliberately something a little more nebulous. It was a place where independent designers and developers could pitch together, collaborate, and eventually use their momentum to bootstrap good products.

It took us a surprisingly long way. Sixo worked with clients and partners around the world, pulled together some genuinely excellent people, and delivered work for some of the biggest brands in the world. Some of it was polished. Some of it was not. I remember speaking to clients from Kuala Lumpur on a shaky internet connection, trying to sound relaxed while the call kept dropping, and waking up at 4AM to fly to London to fill in on a contract, and flying back to Berlin at 7PM to go to bed. It was not always elegant, but it was real (thank you RyanAir).

I'm proud that we managed to do good work with good people, without becoming heavy. Small teams and minimal noise. Across the work/relationships/clients, it helped deliver millions of dollars in value, and more importantly, it proved that a small group of independent people can compete with the best.

After just a couple of years, it became clear that Sixo had done what it needed to do for us as individuals and that the next step was to use it as a springboard. I liked the collective structure, but I had less interest in forcing the structure to keep explaining itself. People were already taking the parts that mattered and using them in their own ways: starting studios, joining ambitious teams, raising money, working with better clients, and building lives around their own version of independence. That was, in the grand scheme of things, an outcome I'm happy with.

So, Sixo is no more. I've always liked the way Teehan+Lax wrote about closure as a next act rather than an ending, and that feels right here too. Sixo was useful, strange, occasionally chaotic, and very good to me. It gave me clients, collaborators, stories, and a very strong idea of the kind of work I want to keep doing. Sixo is closed, but the lesson learned remains: small teams, good communication, serious work.