Who We Are.
Longtale Studios represents researchers, designers, and creatives. We’ve built businesses, grown start-ups, developed innovative new products, and consulted for some of the biggest firms in the world. We live and work in different locations, sharing our diverse experience to amplify our individual expertise.
We are deeply dissatisfied with current state, frustrated by the dearth of imagination, and totally not convinced this is the best we can do. We research, we imagine, and we educate. We are a decentralized collective of instigators. We are here to upend the apple cart, to zag when others zig.
The Philosophy
Learning is a lifestyle.
We are challenged by complexity every day, in subjects we will never master. We specialize into silos. At Longtale Studios, we believe learning is the bridge across these domains, a universal language that promotes creativity, collaboration, and empathy. We aspire to a learning lifestyle, to become expert-generalists, translators that travel between silos and explode the possibilities.
The status quo is boring.
We are animated by alternative futures, agitating for utopias, liberated from the scaffolding of the past that constrains imagination and latent human potential. We believe in a gentler, kinder, future society designed to nourish human flourishing in all its glorious cultural expressions. We can show you these worlds, shining, shimmering, splendid.
The Name
Longtale Studios is a not so clever portmanteau of long-tail, as in the long-tail business strategy, and tale, as in story. It reminds us to never forget the people, meet people where they are, listen to their stories. It challenges us to think in long time horizons and imagine all possible worlds. It is inspired, at least in part, by the classic children’s book, Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse.
The Founder
Longtale Studios was founded by Josh Vitulli in 2020. He started agitating for utopia in the aughts as a Peace Corps volunteer and continued during eight years with the design firm Gensler. There he helped establish a real estate analytics team, build the innovation consulting business, and developed a futures practice. Josh credits his travels for his learning schema - a manic openness to the new combined with cross-cultural empathy - and the lessons learned building an industrial chicken refrigeration warehouse still influence our work today.