S4 Ep. 5 Raphael Ouzan – Growing and evolving organizations through Cloud Teams

Boundaryless Conversations Podcast

According to our guest Raphael Ouzan, next year's big thing is: “cloud-based teams.” Companies are having an increasingly hard time hiring the right people to work on their most pressing problems and opportunities for development. To overcome this, Raphael founded A.Team, the world’s first cloud-team formation platform, enabling companies to form, manage, and scale external, remote teams instantly. Its TeamGraph connects thousands of highly skilled product builders in an invite-only network—empowering them to escape rigid structures to team up with companies building market-leading products.

Raphael is a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor on a mission to unlock human potential with technology. Among other things, Raphael co-founded BillGuard—the antivirus for bills (acquired by Prosper), co-founded BlockNation with Apollo Mgmt CEO Marc Rowan to invest in web3, and founded ITC, a not-for-profit for global tech upskilling. A decorated officer of IDF’s tech unit, he was named 30 under 30 by Forbes, and Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum.

In this episode, we dive into what “cloud-based teams” mean and analyze what perspectives such teams open up for organizations. We also reflect on the role of companies themselves: according to Raphael, we should never refer to “external teams”; instead, as entrepreneurs, we need to think more boundaryless (as we always say).

Remember that you can always find transcripts and podcast notes from the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/raphael-ouzan/

Key Highlights

👉 Setting up high-performing teams driven by passion and freedom.

👉 When focusing on outcomes, external versus internal becomes irrelevant.

👉 The disruption of traditional employment.

👉 The Ocean’s Eleven analogy.

Topics (Chapters)

00:00 Introduction: who is Raphael Ouzan

02:28 Definition of a cloud-based team

07:38 A.Team: how it works and its Business model

15:13 Insights about cloud-based teams

20:11 How A.Team guarantees that a team will work as "a real team"

24:43 On teams’ accountability

30:02 Increasing the "skin in the game" of teams

33:50 Organizational model and networks

39:55 The value of a curated network

42:36 Engaging the community

47:23 A.Team: what's next?

48:22 Raphael Ouzan's breadcrumbs

To find out more about Raphael Ouzan's work:

👉 Twitter: https://twitter.com/raphaelouzan

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelouzan

👉 Website: https://raphaelouzan.com

Other references and mentions:

👉 A.Team website: https://www.a.team

👉 AWS Mental Model: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/enterprise-strategy/mental-models-for-your-digital-transformation

👉 Conway's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

👉 Utopia for “builders”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-change-3-content-principles-2022-joe-lazer-lazauskas

👉 Ocean’s Eleven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean%27s_Eleven

Raphael Ouzan’s suggested breadcrumbs (things listeners should check out):

👉 Adam Grant, Think Again: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878107

Recorded on 8 November 2022.

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