It feels appropriate that the first blog post on the site gives some context—the story of Joyned's recent history and how Brightec (and therefore how I) came to be involved. So get a coffee ☕️, relax, and enjoy, and I'll walk you through the characters involved and the plot.
The Characters
The Founder
Sam Cooke is the original founder of Joyned. His background is as a serial entrepreneur, often leading the technical development of the projects he is involved in. His most significant success (to date 😉) was as a co-founder of Mixcloud – an online music streaming service that grew to 20M users and more than 20 employees before raising any investment. Following investment in 2018, Sam exited to build Joyned (originally called CommunityLoop) full-time.
The Partner
Okay, it's not strictly a character itself but Brightec is made up of multiple people who have contributed to the story. Brightec is a mobile app development agency founded in 2010 by Andy Ferrett (me) and now led by Josh O'Riordan. We design, build and maintain apps for large organisations, such as Virgin, Waterstones and even one for Google. We have won multiple awards for the team and culture we have created, and we're proud of the community we have built around our purpose of being "a company that our customers love working with, and our employees love working for".
The Plot
Sam was a key volunteer at a large UK church, for more than 10 years and, through that, had an excellent understanding of the problems facing churches and volunteer organisations. Over three years, Sam built CommunityLoop as a platform to strengthen and grow in-person community. It was (and continues to be) very successful for that organisation and others across the UK.
"CommunityLoop has been a game changer for our team!"
Sam is a technical entrepreneur. He likes using technology to address a problem and then creating a new product around it. In 2023, he started looking for a partner to help make CommunityLoop sustainable as a business. To add additional momentum to the marketing, business development, customer relationship management, and the general business of business. Enter (stage left) Brightec.
Some may know that I took a sabbatical in 2023. I've written about it here. It was while I was away that Sam and Brightec had their first date (through a mutual connection). Josh and Sam agreed that we had a common purpose (to build exceptional teams and communities) and that we should continue to date and explore what the future might hold. Returning in September 2023, I was excited by the opportunity, and we agreed that a partnership between CommunityLoop and Brightec should occur. ❤️
We tied the knot in April 2024, and all parties have been working to establish a new entity since then. Under the name Joyned, a company has been created, a team gathered, and a common purpose established. Brightec continues to offer best-in-class mobile applications for large-scale organisations. Joyned is an app product that makes team messaging better, more inclusive, and safer for companies, organisations, and communities. We exist to enable all organisations to build healthy, safe and vibrant communities.
Cut to the present day... We'd love to chat if you are interested in what we are doing, our product, or our purpose. Please contact us via the website, and we'll arrange a conversation.
.png)
