A brief moment before a product launch

By the time I publish this, our team will have launched Creative Market Pro, a curated design asset subscription. Our hope is that it helps teams create something amazing faster than ever before, which means more financial independence for the tens of thousands of creators around the world who upload products to Creative Market.

In this moment, though, as I write, we haven’t shipped anything. We’ve missed two internal deadlines and reset expectations with ourselves and our team. The list of to-dos in Asana is long. And when one developer checks a task off, a product manager adds two more. The site, built on a completely new framework and architecture, is hampered by an elusive and frustrating performance bottleneck.

It’s all hands on deck. We’ve asked most of the remote engineering team to fly in to San Francisco for a couple weeks to make one final push. People are missing time with their friends and families. Product managers have set aside their roadmaps and priorities as resources are shifted around. One engineer has re-scheduled her vacation to Hawaii; a WebOps engineer cuts his vacation short and another offers to wake up at 5 a.m. to monitor the eventual launch. Despite our best effort to be optimistic, there is a sense of uncertainty in the air. There are weaker moments when I wonder, can we do this?

And yet if you were to walk into Creative Market’s office just off the Embarcadero, you might be surprised to find a group of people smiling and laughing. You would see people standing around someone’s desk, collaborating and working through problems together. In one of our meeting rooms, adorned with a mural painted by our Senior Brand Designer, Bronwyn Gruet, a few team members huddle around a laptop. They watch a video, sent by a Creative Market shop owner just days after he welcomed his third daughter into the world, thanking our team for creating a marketplace that changed his life.

Late in the day, you’d see an engineer place a fresh cup of coffee on another person’s desk. You might overhear another engineer, who hasn’t slept well in days, say to teammate, “I’d be happy to help you out with that later tonight.” The hours go by and the lights never seem to turn off. Close to midnight, someone finally breaks and they say, their voice with a tone of guilt that’s so far from necessary, “I’m heading to my hotel, but I’ll be back online in 10 minutes.”

There are moments in the life of a company which test a team’s character. Late launches, bad news, a soft week in the numbers. A small thing can feel daunting and a big thing can seem insurmountable. A friend and colleague once said, “there is a light at the end of tunnel, but you can’t see it when you’re looking down.” Despite all this, I am witness to a group of miraculous people that held their heads up and came together during challenging times. I have been reminded that when you trust and empower people who want to do good work and treat people well while they do it, any goal can be accomplished.

On the far side of our office, a dining table sits just below a group of posters that display our company’s eight core values. Two read “we’re all in this together” and “you get what you give.” This may be an extraordinary time, and I know we will make sure the days get back to normal, but in this moment, I am so proud of this team.

-

Creative Market Pro launched on February 20. It features over 270,000 curated fonts, graphics, templates, add-ons, photos and themes — all in a single subscription.

We’re always looking for amazing people to join the Creative Market team. We value our culture as much as we value our mission, so if helping creators turn passion into opportunity sounds like something you’d love to do with a group of folks who feel the same way, then check out our job openings and apply today!