About the Company
Intend is a one-person company, run by Malcolm Ocean. Read Malcolm's bio below or scroll down for a history of the company itself.
Malcolm Ocean
Malcolm used to worry in high school that time he'd spent reading self-help blogs and books would never pay itself back, but instead not only did it multiply his own capacity to do meaningful work but also evolved into creating systems for others, particularly Intend.
Malcolm also shares his techniques and models with others via 1-on-1 coaching and on his blog malcolmocean.com—this business context offers a chance to dig deeper into the "systems" and "design" components of his undergrad degree Systems Design Engineering, which had unfortunately been overfocused on the "engineering" piece.
Part of what Malcolm loves about working on/at/in Intend is getting to wear a lot of different hats, but in the process he's realized that while he's a generalist he does like wearing some hats more than others (plus some problems require specialists) so part of what he's excited about in relation to scaling Intend and the larger meta-team is that he'll be able to focus even more on what he loves doing: big-picture vision, metaphor design, subtle interaction design, and getting new ideas off the ground.
Follow Malcolm on Twitter for the latest thoughts off the top of his head, including culture stuff and Intend design ideation.
The History of Intend
2012-2015: Intend began as an experiment for Malcolm Ocean in creating a passive income business so that he could spend his time focusing on what's seemed most important to the world, without having to worry about money. He decided in 2013 to make his business be a complex-goal-tracking app, inspired by a really meaningful experience in 2012 of setting & achieving a goal to record an album of original music. Upon then achieving his passive income goal with Intend in 2015, Malcolm dove deeper into the world of human culture & collaboration, while continuing to work on Intend on the side.
2016-2019: For the most part, Intend was a 1-person company prior to 2021, although Malcolm's long-time friend & fellow culture-naut Benjamin Carr joined the team for about 10 months in 2016-2017 and they worked on a few projects together, including launching the ongoing Goal-Crafting Intensive workshops. Benjamin has since left the Intend team, but remains a partner of the GCI project, which has grown in size as a business venture to be comparable to the Intend app, but is now somewhat independent teamwise.
2020-2021: In mid-2020, Malcolm and his friend George instantiated a fellowship experiment, which resembled a 10-12 week internship to explore the frontiers of fluid learning-oriented Game B employment. This was a profound experience for both of them of what's possible in organizations. In early 2021, George approached Malcolm and said "I want to join the Intend team". Malcolm was enthusiastic to try that, as a further more serious experiment.
2021-2023: Over the following two years, Malcolm & George explored the question of how Intend can be & become a working prototype of a perfect place to work for people who want their work to also be a place of not just growth but also healing and deep untangling. We successfully created a context for untangling, and... one thing that got untangled was that while the meta-project felt good, George & Intend aren't a good fit on a more straightforward level: what work is there to be done, and what work does George want to do.
2023-onwards: Malcolm renamed the app, which was previously called Complice, to Intend, and is working on growing it so it can help more people and support him to have a family. He's also working on writing a book to convey the philosophy. The team may remain as one person, or perhaps someone joins to help with some of the technical aspects of scaling.