Introducing Canopy 🌱

New brand, new product – and new newsletter here on Substack 💚

Hello world!

If we haven’t met before, I’m Claire, CEO of Canopy (formerly Know Your Team) 👋  It’s nice to be connected with you here!

Today is a big day…

We’re officially rebranding Know Your Team (KYT) to Canopy 🌱

With our rebrand, we have a new product 🎉

In our 10-year history as a company, these are the biggest changes we’ve made to date. 

👉 You can read all about our new brand and new product Canopy here.

I’m also kicking off a new newsletter – this newsletter – here on Substack.

Why a new newsletter? And why Substack?

I’ve always had a newsletter, sharing writings on leadership and what we learn from training 30,000+ managers at companies like Airbnb, Shopify, and Wikipedia. 

But my previous newsletter felt clunky. Clunky to put together, clunky for the reader to read. I felt like I spent an equal amount of time setting up the post to publish it as much as I did writing it…

I discovered Substack quite recently, a bit of a late bloomer I suppose, and I fell in love with it. The UI is spectacular for folks writing content. The reach that Substack has, how it cultivates a community, is impressive. 

Substack feels like it's for writers. As someone who deeply values and is eager to support other writers, I want to invest in this community and corner of the internet.

So here we are! 

On this Substack, I hope to share more deeply what’s on my mind in all things leadership and business.

Every week, I’ll share insights, best practices, and observations I’m seeing to help leaders face day-to-day challenges.

And, I’ll share behind-the-scenes looks at how we run our own  customer-funded, software-AND-a-service business (it’s a bit of a unique one, admittedly!).

Some topics you can expect to see in our new Canopy Newsletter include:

• The 10 biggest lessons we’ve learned in running a business in the last 10 years

• Being a “player coach” as a leader – What are the best ways to manage your time if you’re a leader who also has IC responsibilities?

• Reductions in force – Are they possible to do well? How do you recover from them with the remaining team?

• How we did our rebrand in 3 weeks with 3 people (yes, you read that correctly 😅)

• Coaching junior team members – How do you help team members level-up without micromanaging them

• Building a “SaAS” – “Software AND a Service” business:  Pros, cons, challenges, lessons, learned

• How do you recruit and hire well in with limited resources in a small company

… and more!

I’ll be posting once a week. Please feel free to share this Substack with friends and colleagues you think might find it interesting…

Look forward to having you join me here!

- Claire

CEO, Canopy