the future of thehappycorp

hybernation

The past five years have been an invaluable learning opportunity and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has been involved in our happy little project. thehappycorp has been a lesson in taking a great idea, setting up shop in your apartment, and making a run at an industry that does not always welcome the “new and different” with open arms. We learned a lot, and had a lot of fun. We were mostly happy, and we still are.

Building and working with the thehappycorp has afforded me the opportunity to work on some amazing projects. The work that our team has done for Brooklyn Brewery, Idealist.org, LVHRD, and the MoMA (among others) stands out as some of the best I have ever been a part of and I am incredibly proud of it.

More than the client work, or the chance to learn the ins and outs of owning a company, having the opportunity to build my own team and my own space has been the most amazing experience of my life. With the help of my partner, Matt Spangler, a new kind of creative agency was born, and from its inception thehappycorp global was on a mission. 

Early in my career I realized how much power the creative work we do in this business really has and while it is sometimes easy to disassociate ourselves from the brands and products we help sell, thehappycorp was created with the notion that this disconnect was dangerous. Throughout our existence thehappycorp has tried to work with brands we believed in, on projects that would truly increase global happiness. This was both our greatest motivation and our greatest challenge. 

At the end of this week thehappycorp will go into a kind of hibernation. When a company is built on and driven by a truly great idea, it’s hard to really make it stop. Our good friends and some of the best team members I have ever worked with have created Future Friends and will be taking the reigns on all our current work and carrying thehappycorp torch a little bit further into the future. My partner, Matt Spangler, will be heading out into the world of consulting  to focus on branding and marketing projects. I will be joining the full service firm TAXI to take on the challenge of the newly created position, Director of Innovation. I am incredibly eager to bring the enthusiasm and spirit of thehappycorp to an agency in whose culture I truly believe. 

That thehappycorp is closing up shop does not sadden me entirely, the simple fact that we created it and kept it going for more than five years proves that there is a place in this industry, this city, and this world for the kind of thinking and the principles that thehappycorp stands for, the employees who worked with thehappycorp wanted to be here because they believed in those principles and will certainly continue to, regardless of where they work. They are all wonderful and incredibly talented people.


As for me, TAXI did not hire me in spite of my motivations for starting thehappycorp, but because of them. I have put everything I am into this company and that it is time to move on is difficult, but my beliefs have not changed, in fact, this experience has only taught me to work harder, smarter, and more resolutely than ever to help effect the kind of change I have always dreamt of seeing, in the business and in the world.

Thanks for tuning in everyone, it’s been super fun and I hope to hear from all of you in the future.

doug jaeger
founder
thehappycorp global