TLDR: Behance founder talks about bootstrapping a startup
by Business Insider (these highlights provided for you by Annotote)
“ Adobe purchased Behance for a reported $150 million, and Belsky went out of his way to turn half of his employees into millionaires from the sale.
“ the idea behind Behance was to put up your work, have your own personal portfolio hosted on your own domain, but also to have all that portfolio content categorized and organized for people to find it and give you jobs … it’s now a network of over 10 million creatives all around the world
#freelancers
“ there were two reasons [why I bootstrapped Behance] .. we were medium-agnostic but mission-centric, so the mission was to organize the creative world, but we would do it through any medium possible, whether it was a book or a conference or a blog or a technology like the Behance network. And so I knew that [lack of focus] was really a red flag to VCs … And also I want to allow for the ability for this to maybe be a lifestyle business
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“ I went without a paycheck for about two years … I had family that was willing to kind of help me on my rent and stuff like that
“ I just wanted the business to succeed so much that I remember actually not even reimbursing myself for taxi receipts because I’d be like, OK, I just want these numbers to look as great as possible.
“ design was becoming a competitive advantage in the business world. And we said OK, if we’re the number one platform for designers and design is becoming the competitive advantage, we’re going to be fine.
“ we raised venture funding five years into the business … we only sold a very small percentage of the company
“ the press and media, and everyone else, loves covering the romanticism of the start, when people quit their jobs and start something and launch a new idea or raise some funding. And then we also love covering and talking about the finish, whether it’s an acquisition or an IPO, or a bankruptcy … What doesn’t get covered [is] the messy middle [which includes two things]. It’s endurance … And then it’s also optimization … constantly optimizing anything that actually is working
“ I’m seeing a lot more of companies building things off of the [native iPhone or Android] address book rather than off of Facebook or other established social graphs …when it comes to commerce and collaboration and working together, whatever, your network is basically already in your phone
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“ there will be a reckoning, where there will be a lot of M&A activity that a lot of investors and employees will not benefit from, and some companies will probably just go under.
“ take that idea that you have and see if it has legs … if you start something that really needs to exist, you will find your audience for it. There are so many new modern ways of raising money like AngelList and crowdfunding.
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