![]() For a brief time, we like to think Design Inc. was in existence we helped over 900 companies complete over $4 Million in design projects and helped employ freelance designers all over the world. In the end I am very proud to say while Design Inc. With the support of the board and our incredible investors, I made the call to close Design Inc. My team would be out of jobs, my investors would not make a return and our community would have a major source of their income go away. made sense, but emotionally it was extremely difficult. Logically the decision to close Design Inc. We had a platform that was making a difference in peoples lives, with a business model that made little money and a limited market to attack. Moreover, if we were able to procure another round of funding, I was not confident on the ultimate size of the market we were working in. We simply didn’t have near enough runway to grind Design Inc. Looking at our limited runway felt like staring over a cliff without a parachute. Despite all these efforts our revenue numbers only improved slightly. Over the next 7 months we would do everything we could imagine to grow the business, meeting each morning to review what was working and what wasn’t - we iterated on the product daily and added email drip campaigns, newsletters, podcasts, press articles, influencer outreach, blog posts galore, personal networks, social media and our very own YouTube show. We were very excited, we poured on the gas. Designers were making a great living, companies were able to find designers after months of coming up short and we were finally making revenue. We knew we were onto something because the positive reviews and feedback came pouring in. Taking autonomy away from people, especially in the world of software, will always create distrust in your platform and you will lose users. I believe autonomy and the power to choose are major keys to happiness. Designers would self-select which companies they wanted to send proposals to and companies had the choice of who they wanted to work with. ![]() The pay-to-propose model created the ability for both sides to keep some control and autonomy in the transaction. and if a designer was interested in the project, they would pay a small fee (around $5 to $35) to send their proposal to the Company (we capped each project at 5 proposals). Companies would post their projects to Design Inc. We tried a bunch of other wonky stuff until we finally landed on a pay-to-propose model we borrowed from Thumbtack. Our designers resented us taking a cut of their billings and would often transact off platform to avoid our fees. These early versions were excellent at matching companies with designers, but terrible at actually capturing revenue. tried to capture revenue by taking a cut of each transaction. ![]() We believe designers are in a unique position to improve how our world works, looks and operates.īy the end, the team had built 4 major versions of Design Inc., each version would have a unique value prop and approach to the market.Įarly versions of Design Inc. Our approach was to create a marketplace to help companies and individuals find and work with great designers. was started to bring great design to the world. Please continue reading to learn a bit about what we learned - Perhaps there are a few nuggets here to help you on your journey. Ultimately the outcome of a startup sits squarely on the shoulders of the founder. When a startup fails to blossom into a growing business there is much to learn. Success is not final failure is not fatal it is the courage to continue that counts The universe teased me a bit today when I came across this quote: me release heavy, audible and emotional sigh. Because people are and always will be the most important thing to us, we returned all remaining funds to our investors, dissolved the team, reimbursed our designers and closed the platform for good. ![]() Despite devoted efforts, by a very talented and capable team, we have made the difficult decision to close Design Inc.
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