What is "Fun Inc" and why do we care... EVEN MORE!?

An unexpected journey with a lot to reflect.

It has been over two years since we first sat down and asked ourselves a deceptively simple question: “What is Fun Inc and why do we care?”

Back then, we were wide-eyed and full of a singular, massive ambition - to change the world of business and make it a better environment for humans. Our official Life Goal remains to this day:
”To change the world of business, to make a world of happy humans!”
We had our frameworks, our enthusiasm, and a belief that “fun” was the missing ingredient in the corporate recipe.

But we’ll be honest with you, and in the words of the Fun (not a fun) Man himself, circa June 2025:

It’s not fun building a “Fun” company.

🪞The Mirror: Reflecting on the “Old Us”

Looking back at that original Substack post, we were ultra-idealistic. Since then, we’ve been dragged through the mud of reality. We’ve faced the “summer of s***” where projects (and life?) fell apart, we’ve navigated a landscape where companies seem utterly broken, now than ever, and Fun Man has had days where he’s stared at the ceiling* thinking, “Maybe we should just get a regular 9-to-5 where I can work two hours a day with my fingers in my nose and spend the rest of my time with my family.”

We’ve learned that changing the world with just three people is a Herculean task. We’ve seen our own team members move into roles at Atlassian and Warsaw Dynamics just to keep the lights on because, let’s be real - the “fun” business hasn’t always been the “money” business. But these challenges haven’t weakened our resolve; they’ve sharpened our perspective. We care even more now because we’ve seen the cost of the alternative.

*In his defense, it is a very FUN (and cool) ceiling…

🗓️ 2025: The Year No One Had Any “Fun”

As we moved through 2025, we noticed a trend: a total drought of joy in the global workplace, and it wasn’t just endless layoffs! We’ve encountered three specific archetypes of “un-fun” that serve as a warning to any business leader:

• The “Hamster Wheel” Chaos: We worked with a company last year - let’s call them Tiger Leisure for privacy purposes - where the leadership was so disconnected from their business, they spent many a meeting arguing about what their own products & services actually were. Even once Fun Inc was brought in for short-term, intense workshops, they still felt their North Star was nowhere to be found.
  Eventually, their leading marketing expert left the company, responsibilities and work were spread across those who remained. With each subsequent call to Fun Inc to ask for advice and brainstorm on topics, the scope changed every single time. And we’re talking of a period of less than 6 months. They aren’t moving forward; they’re just running in circles until they burn out.

• The Communication Breakdown: One project we look back on now with fondness, but last autumn we were brought into one hell of a nightmare… where the vibe can only be described as utterly toxic. Communication was bad, collaboration was poor, and camaraderie was non-existent. The leadership was “determined” but not “dedicated” to the people. When the 3 C’s (Communication, Collaboration, Camaraderie) fail, the workplace becomes a pressure cooker. Several months later, and we’ve turned it around; and whilst Artificial Intelligence played a part in our tooling, it was not with “AI magic,” but by fixing the Human Frequency. [Fun Man likes to claim it was AI… “Andy Intelligence”. No comment….]

• The AI False Idol: 95% of marketing right now is screaming about AI, yet more than 95% of companies aren’t actually even using it to make their people’s lives better. Fun Man claims: “They treat AI like a ‘false god’ to be worshipped on a pedestal, rather than a tool for the humans behind the desks.” We’ve seen companies obsess over “AI adoption” while their teams are drowning in manual, soul-crushing processes. Out of 23 projects in 2025, and over 150 pre-sales contact moments, only one (1) was about AI, and even then, the CTO’s concern was human-oriented, not product or service offering: “My people aren’t touching AI at all, and I feel we are missing out on the future.”

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🎉 The Subjectivity of “Fun” and Your 2026 Strategy

If there is one thing we’ve solidified over almost two years, it is this: Fun is subjective.

For Teodora, fun is the “dopamine hit” of fixing complex troubles with motivated people. For Andy, sometimes “fun” is simply the satisfaction of a bill being paid on time so he can provide for his family.

In 2026, the businesses that win won’t be the ones with the best algorithms; they will be the ones that recognize human nature is at the core of commerce. As Teodora so eloquently put it: “AI won’t fix your culture. Your desire to change must come first.”

We’ve spent years in the trenches seeing what does work and what doesn’t, and we are looking to help those leaders who recognize they need change and are actually willing to work on it. It’s like therapy… for business!

• Book a 30-minute “Reality Check” Call: For a flat fee of €80, we will help you identify the primary “un-fun” bottleneck in your business.

• The Workshop: Ready to go deep? Book a Fun Inc Workshop to realign your People with your Processes and Tools!

Let’s make 2026 the year we stop pretending and start building workplaces where humans actually want to be.

“We’ve been collaborating with the Fun Man in the Atlassian Community as a sponsor for sometime, but when we wanted to dive in head first and build out ACE Arnhem ourselves, we did a Lightning Workshop with him to get fully ready as we launched into it all… and it was worth every penny!

We had concerns and worries going into the call, and needed answers to many questions; and 30min later we had clarity, composure, and confidence that the plan we had built out, was solid… plus more information we had not yet considered.

We are now more ready than ever to host our first event with ACE Arnhem thanks to Fun Inc… we can’t recommend these workshops more!” - Las Girlies, aka Greta and Dilara.

Greta, Dilara and Andy, working together on SO(U)L DAY last year. Now they are up & running with ACE Arnhem!

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🍨 Proof in the pudding

Still reading down here below, but not convinced enough to book a session…? Check out our customer success blog on the matter:

From Vision To Victory - How Strategic Action Ignites Tangible Results