When Jackie and I started building Tribe back in 2019, we made two bets:
The first bet is now obvious. AI is the biggest technology shift in a generation, and we're still in the early innings. From where we sit, partnered with the labs building the models and inside the enterprises trying to use them, one thing is clear: closing the gap between model intelligence and business value is a generational problem.
The second bet is still playing out, but it gets more obvious by the day. Closing that gap takes rare talent, the kind that doesn't just understand the technology, but the business, the constraints, and the people around them. AI doesn't transform a company. People do. Our brand never said that part out loud, so we changed that.
Tribe's new identity is built on that idea: the human is the unlock. When every company can call the same APIs and get the same models, intelligence is no longer the bottleneck. What they can't buy is judgment: knowing which problems are worth solving, how to leverage context, using guardrails, integrating with existing systems, and actually getting organizations to adopt new ways of working. Models can generate answers, but people generate outcomes.
To create the brand Jackie and I didn't hire a traditional agency. We called the humans we knew could unlock Tribe’s new identity - Vitor Lourenço, Thales Ribeiro, Fabio Giolito, and Raphael Barreto from the Expa design team. Both Expa and Tribe are builder-led organizations, so the collaboration felt natural from the start. We both think in systems, iterate constantly, and believe technology should extend human potential.
Back in 2013 I worked at Expa where Vitor is a Founding Partner along with Garrett Camp and Roberto Sanabria. Over the years since leaving Expa, Vitor and I became incredibly close. He was my confidant in the earliest days of my founder journey, a rock as I went through the trials and tribulations of fatherhood, and a true friend who took the time to celebrate my wins even when I didn’t.
He's been in Tribe's corner from day one, as an ally and as one of our earliest investors. He believed in Tribe before there was much to believe in, so rebuilding the brand with him and Expa wasn't a question. It was two teams who trusted each other, going all-in until it was right. Exactly how we build anything at Tribe.
Kind of wild when I sit with it: the place that inspired me to dream big is the same place that gave the dream a new face. I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.
I asked Vitor what the Expa team was capturing with the new identity.
Here's how he put it:
“Tribe’s new identity is built around the belief that, even as AI transforms the way we work, people remain at the center of progress. The logo expresses this through an abstract human form with a subtle mechanical quality, bringing human intuition and machine intelligence into a single mark. A broader visual language of precision, geometry in motion, and adaptive systems reinforces this relationship, reflecting technology as a tool that extends human judgment, creativity, and ambition.
Designed as a system rather than a collection of assets, the identity compounds in knowledge with every new application. We built an adaptive, AI-native system composed of modular visual primitives, semantic rules, reusable prompts, and intelligent workflows that encode the brand’s logic. It was designed for humans and AI alike, allowing intelligent agents to understand and apply the brand as reliably as our design team. The result is a system that scales across products, teams, and AI-assisted workflows while preserving consistency, quality, and intent.
Built to evolve, the identity adapts with technology while staying grounded in humanity. Ultimately, it expresses Tribe’s belief that the future won’t be defined by people or AI alone, but by what they create together."
Better models are coming. They always are. The humans who put them to work?
That's the unlock.
That's Tribe.
