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“Strange Birds are true thought partners. Management consultants are notorious for being hired to give you the answer that you've already decided on, and that's not what you do. With you, we actually do get a real third party insight.”
👈 Tien Chiu, Co-Founder
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The evolutionary need
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The Handweaving Academy is an online education platform teaching people not just how to weave, but how to design: helping learners connect technical skill, creative inspiration, and design know-how into something that feels truly their own.
Strange Birds has been with The Handweaving Academy from the beginning, from post-it note idea to launch to growth. We helped them determine what the initial offer would be, what would be inside the community, the programming, the positioning, and wrote the website and sales emails.
The beta launch had a Founding member size cap at 500, which filled at a breakneck pace.
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Founding member spots 100% filled, a full week ahead of schedule
→ 43% filled within 6 hours
→ 87% filled within 5 days
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But two years later, they were at a breaking point. The system that had gotten them here wasn’t enough to sustain the next stage. They were stretched thin, trying to juggle day-to-day demands with big-picture goals, and getting stuck in analysis paralysis.
They had tried a lot already. But the offer was confusing, the messaging didn’t reflect the depth of their teaching, and the site experience was overwhelming for users. Their growth had outpaced their systems.
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“Out of the 14,000 things we could do, which make would make sense?” – Tien
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“Too many choices, too many things to look at… Instead of telling people where to put their attention, we were telling them where to find everything. It was just too much stuff.” – Janet, co-founder
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