"When You’re Humble and Have Humility - You Rise to the Top"

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

Michael Gaizutis is the Founder of RNO1 – Experience Design Agency for Tech & Web3 Brands of the Future. Michael began his early life ideating, creating and building things that mattered: things that were radically different by design. When everyone went the same way, Michael went the other way.

This ethos drove him to collaborate with some of the best and brightest minds, teams, and talent, all around the world. From working in the Agency Space for well–known Branding & Digital Agencies on the West Coast – to – building and shaping an Early Stage Consumer Tech Startup with a Team of 12, Michael’s ambition to challenge the conventional has always been front and center. Now, Michael spends his days as the Founder and Visionary of RNO1 igniting growth for Tech & Web3 companies, leveraging the power and purpose of Experience Design.

RNO1’s process called Fluid Movements™ ultimately works to position Tech & Web3 companies as market leaders (or what he calls “Wavemakers”). As the traditional agency model is broken, RNO1’s unique Agency–Subscription Models are custom built for Tech & Web3 brands to scale well into the future (unlike any other existing agency in the space).

What's your company called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

We’re RNO1 – Experience Design Agency for Tech & Web3 Brands of the Future.

What is the origin story?

We began as a brand and digital consultancy called “Ruleno.1” which meant to “livethebrand”. As we scaled up our team and talent, and organically grew into an Agency, we changed our name to an acronym of “Ruleno.1” which became RNO1.

What do you love about your team?

Our team of Strategists, Designers, Developers, Marketers, and Media Gurus are … insanely creative, innovative, cutting-edge and different (by design). They’re relentless in their abilities to consistently push boundaries of what’s possible (whether a Rebranding, UX/UI Design effort, or Web3/Meta Strategy of tomorrow) and challenge the status quo.

If you weren’t working at your company, what would you be doing?

I’d be a total beach bum, 24/7 ;)... 

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

On the Client Partner side, we measure success by their continued growth in the market: the ebbs and flows of customer/user acquisition, brand investment/valuation, brand momentum and equity. On our agency side (RNO1), we look at growth metrics like customer value/retention (at scale), social followers/community building, and press that supports our radical differentiation in the tech and web3 space.

What’s most exciting about your company traction to date?

We’ve been able to radically shift and scale our business model, now as an Experience Design Agency exclusively working with Tech & Web3 Brands. We started around 12 years ago, and for the first 8-9 years existed like most agencies do: taking on projects and retainers to “feed the funnel”. We’ve quickly grown into the “Web3 Experience Design Agency” of today/tomorrow, with an evolution into a Tech Media Company: between our Discord Community (https://discord.com/invite/xV9fTpKy7Q), Live Demo Day Events (Retrn Demo Day), and Web3 Podcast (Launching August 2022).

Success for us is about movement vs. metrics. We like to see growth, even if it’s incremental, with a long-tail vision in our line of sight. Our own vision is to be one-part agency (Experience Design Agency), one-part Tech Media Company for Web3 (Live Events/Podcast), and one-part Web3 Accelerator/Fund. We’re riding all the right waves in Web3 ;).

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

VR/AR, Metaverse(s), Blended Reality Platforms excited me - and Robots worry me ;). Well, Terminator 1, 2, 3, etc. frankly (haha).

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Love the mix of stories/knowledge that come out of Hackernoon… from Tech to Web3 and all things in between. Stellar destination to learn, grow, and scale whatever it is you’re working on now (or in the future).

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Never give up. You can’t fail (if you never give up).

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

I’ve learned that when you’re humble and have humility - you rise to the top.