Fredrik Thomassen, co-founder and CEO of Superside, joins the show to unpack how startups can scale creative work without slowing down or burning out their teams.
Superside is a subscription-based design company that helps fast-growing teams get high-quality creative at scale. In this conversation, Fredrik shares how he built a globally distributed team, why async collaboration beats real-time meetings, and what most startups get wrong when managing creative work.
We also get into:
- Hiring in overlooked markets
- Building customer trust and employee cohesion across time zones
- Structuring creative operations like a product team
- Why treating designers as partners — not vendors — drives better outcomes
If you're juggling growth and messaging or just trying to build creative capacity without the chaos, listen in.
RUNTIME 44:58 EPISODE BREAKDOWN(2:30) “ You start out and think, ‘I can do this for four or five years,’ and all of a sudden, a decade has passed.”
(4:32) Superside’s beta was popular, but “ it was a total mess behind the scenes.”
(7:36) Why “ it felt like an obvious move to go to YC.”
(11:15) “ We found product-market fit, and then kind of COVID hit at the same time.”
(14:17) The biggest mistake Fredrik made while adding headcount in the early days
(18:59) Working with a founder coach has been “scary, but also in a sense, very motivating.”
(21:39) Fredrik lists his preferred Norwegian authors
(25:29) Inside Superside’s pivot from freelancer marketplace to enterprise creative services
(29:40) “ What's growing at the moment is AI-powered creative services for our enterprise customers.”
(32:08) Quantifying the efficiency gai”s from using AI-enabled services
(37:53) How Superside collaborates with clients to provide strategic services and production work
(40:31) “ It's quite hard to build a lifestyle business.”
(42:40) The one question he’d have to ask the CEO before accepting a job offer with an early-stage startup
LINKS- Fredrik Thomassen
- Haakon Heir
- Jing Venås Kjeldsen
- Superside
- Y Combinator
- Paul Graham essays
- Hunger, Knut Hamsun
- Jon Fosse
- Karl Ove Knausgård
📥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7249143254363856897/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/
Thanks for listening!
– Walter.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.