Scott Sternberg Runs Entireworld Like a Lean Startup

On episode 45 of The HBR Show, we caught up with Scott Sternberg, designer and creative director. You may know Sternberg for his work as founder and head of the irreverent, Americana-inspired Band Of Outsiders, but Scott has spent the past two years letting a new idea gestate. Entireworld is Scott’s latest venture: a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that Sternberg sees as a lean startup. “Band Of Outsiders kinda went to shit,” Sternberg says, “and I had this idea—even before the end of Band—that wouldn’t all of this make a whole lot more sense if we stripped away the artificiality of where the pricing was, how we shipped the product, almost everything that fit within the existing fashion system.” Enter: Entireworld. While many business-owners might see starting from square one—with less funding and infrastructure—as a challenge, Sternberg saw the lack of money and infrastructure as an “auto-focus feature” — everything unnecessary falls away. With the fat trimmed away, Sternberg could focus on the meat and potatoes of the brand: product and communication. “In a lot of creative environments, when there’s a founder or a creative director, there’s a cult of personality around them. There’s a pile of eggshells around them that everyone’s tip-toeing on. None of that exists within my world and my team.” According to the brand’s website, there are only seven full-time employees, most of whom are Band Of Outsiders alumni. Scott continually refers to this idea of Entireworld (the