The messy middle: Tyler Eide on the hardest part of growing up as a founder

Creative Boom: Insight Career The messy middle: Tyler Eide on the hardest part of growing up as a founder Studios often start with the best intentions, but as they grow, those foundations can start to blur. In this insightful piece, Tyler Eide reflects on the messy middle of building Seattle-based brand development studio Parker, and why learning to introduce structure isn’t about losing culture, but protecting it. Written By: Guest Author 26 May 2026 When I started , my intention was one that many founders can probably relate to. I wanted to build a design studio I always wanted to work at. In the early days, leadership wasn’t something I had defined.

I was just feeling my way through it. The studio started informally, built around friendships and shared history. We all believed that work could feel different to what we’d experienced elsewhere. There were no real structures or expectations in place. I brought people in one by one—friends, collaborators, people I trusted—and we figured it out together. It worked because it was personal. We cared about the work, but we also cared about each other. The culture then naturally formed around the group in the room.

I leaned into that, because I wanted the studio to feel open and collaborative, because we all shared that desire to make something interesting. It wasn’t a traditional workplace, but somewhere that people could do their best work without the usual constraints. For a while, that was enough. It was the baseline I kept trying to return to, even as the studio grew and the reality of running a business started to shift. The shift The turning point came during Covid, which I’m sure many other founders can relate to. Almost overnight, everything that had felt stable became uncertain.

I went from building something I believed in to trying to protect it at all costs. A lot of my decisions from that point on were driven by fear. As people left and the studio quietened down, I found myself trying to recreate what had worked before. I hired from within my network again, hoping that rebuilding the same dynamic would bring back the same sense of ease and joy. On the surface, it looked like things were working, as the team was growing and projects were coming in, but internally, something had shifted. I was holding onto an old version of the business while operating in a completely different reality.

What I didn’t realise at the time was how much that tension was shaping my leadership. I was trying to keep everyone happy, trying to recreate a culture that no longer matched the stakes, and also carrying the pressure of making it all work. That’s when things started to blur. Expectations weren’t clear and boundaries weren’t defined. Decisions were often driven more by instinct than intention. From my perspective, I was protecting the culture. In reality, I was creating confusion.

Good intentions, unclear expectations One thing that always felt true to me was that I cared about the people in the studio as individuals first, and employees second. I wanted people to feel supported, trusted, and unburdened by the usual pressures of work, so I tried to create an environment that felt generous and human; where people felt looked after, not managed. Unfortunately, that meant when I did try to manage, it fell flat and felt forced in contrast. In the absence of clear expectations and structures (in work and in our working relationships), there was just too much ambiguity.

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The article discusses significant insights on balancing culture and structure in brand strategy, which is crucial for startups and relevant to brand strategy professionals, though the themes of growth and culture are commonly explored.