Archive for March, 2008

Purpose, business, and values

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

We have been re-thinking lately whether crowdSPRING needs or wants a “Mission Statement.” Although we had rejected the notion a number of months ago, we are wondering whether it might have value for us. Many businesses have one, but many more choose not to (whether consciously or not) . After bouncing this around a bit, we are thinking that it is a good way to communicate to our various audience (users, team members, investors) crowdSPRING’s purpose, model, and values.

Writing a mission statement should not be undertaken lightly – proper attention should be paid. Better to go without, than to have one that is shallow or banal. As I work on ours, there are three premises I am trying to keep in mind:

1. it needs to describe what we are, what we do, and who we serve,
2. it needs to act as a motivator, and
3. it needs to fit on a tee shirt.

This is not so easy. The “what we are” should describe the business itself; the “what we do” should define our purpose for being; and the “who we serve” should depict our users, both Buyers and Contributors. Mission statement as a motivator is tricky too – I want our mission statement to inspire, to provide guidance, and to drive us to excel and succeed. Thats a lot for one tee-shirt, isn’t it? Here’s a pass at the what and the who:

crowdSPRING is a global marketplace for creative services.
crowdSPRING gives buyers real choice and gives creatives a level playing field on which to compete.
crowdSPRING helps buyers and providers find one another.

A little dry perhaps, but descriptive. Motivational? I don’t think so. Tee shirt? size XXL. Looking again at I just wrote, I think that the three statements above hit maybe 2 out of 3. The first statement defines our business, the second our purpose, but I would not say that the third reflects our values. How hard can it be – what is our purpose for existing, what is our organizational concept or “business,” and what are our values? Here’s another whack at it:

crowdSPRING is a global marketplace for creative services.
crowdSPRING gives buyers genuine choice and creatives a level playing field on which to compete.
crowdSPRING provides simplicity, transparency, and protection of intellectual property.

Not bad, but not exactly motivational. Here’s a more narrative approach:

crowdSPRING is a global community for buyers and providers of creative services. In our marketplace, buyers post projects and, in turn, creatives submit works for the buyer to choose from. We provide a level playing field, upon which the only important factors are the quality of an idea and the execution of the work. The process we provide is simple and transparent, and the intellectual property of our contributors is respected and safeguarded throughout.

Closer, I suppose….. I guess the rest of the weekend will be devoted to a “tee-shirt” pass…

Thoughts?

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3 weeks. 337 Entries. 3 Winners.

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

How better to test crowdSPRING’s model for buying creative services than on ourselves?

The last time I purchased web design services (several years ago), my law firm paid $10,000 for one designer to prepare three homepage concepts. I disliked all of them. The designer was good and the designs were not bad. But my choices were limited and the designs looked like 99.9% of the sites on the Internet. I thought at the time that there had to be a better way.

Here are some of the amazing statistics from our homepage project.

3 Weeks

We wondered whether we could get enough concepts for our homepage design in a 3 week period. We decided that if we would ask buyers to post projects on crowdSPRING – we had to prove that we would eat our own dog food.

Yummy! We are absolutely thrilled with our homepage design project. Every day for three weeks, we met as a team and over lunch, provided feedback to all participants. It was a fun process. Imagine choosing from 337 concepts!

337 Entries

Over a three week period, we received 337 entries. That’s more than 16 every day! I thought I’d share a few interesting facts:

  • 80 different designers submitted homepage design concepts
  • the designers were from dozens of different countries
  • many designers submitted one design concept
  • the winning design was from a designer who submitted 28 concepts
  • one of the runner-up designs was from a designer who submitted only 3 concepts
  • another runner-up design from a designer who submitted 9 concepts

3 Winners

The winning design was from a student (studying graphic design) from the Netherlands. We did not know he was a student until after we selected his design. If we followed the traditional model, we never would have hired him, because as a student, he lacks relevant experience. On crowdSPRING, only his work matters. We absolutely love his designs, iteration, execution, and professionalism. We didn’t care if he was a retired designer, a professional, a homemaker, a student or a janitor (more on that later).

Winning design: $5000 Fee

winning design

One of the runner-up designs was submitted by a Canadian designer.

Runner-up: $500 Fee

runner up

The other runner-up design was submitted by a British designer.

Runner-up: $500 Fee

runner up

1 Janitor

Some of you might not know that our logo was designed at the end of 2006 by a designer (intrepidguppy) who was then (and continues to be) a janitor working the night shift (he lives in Canada). He is an outstanding graphics designer and is an active participant on our invite-only beta site. When we first selected his design at the end of 2006, we did not know he worked full time as a janitor. We never would have picked him to design our logo had we known that. But his work speaks for itself and can stand proudly against some of the best professionals out there. His portfolio is outstanding, his clients are happy. He is able to do something he loves – create wonderful designs for people around the world.

Not bad for proof of concept: Logo designed by a janitor. Homepage designed by a student. Their talent amazes us.

A word about Beta

Our invite-only beta is progressing very well. We’d love to open the doors and let the world look (just a little while longer…), but want to first make sure that everything works. Our small group of beta testers has been absolutely outstanding in helping us test, improve, and create the foundation for a great community. We’re very fortunate to have creatives from across the world help us test the crowdSPRING marketplace. And the winners in the various projects in beta emphasize how diverse our small but growing community has become. In the few short weeks that we’ve been in a closed beta, numerous real projects have been completed. Winning designers come from countries around the world – Singapore, Serbia, Canada, Philippines, India, Netherlands, England, Argentina, Romania, and the United States, among others. They’ve earned thousands of dollars in winning projects (and clients) and have given us many, many suggestions on how we can improve crowdSPRING. We are greatly indebted to them for their contributions.

We look forward to throwing the doors open in April to invite the rest of the world to take a look. We think you’ll be pleased!

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Listening

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Iteration: (n.) \?i-t?-?r?-sh?n\
A procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result. From latin iterum “again.”

In the mathematical sense, to “iterate” is to go through a routine over and over, using the output of one step as the input of the next – Isaac Newton was among the first to devise a method for this. Good writers do this with drafts of their work, good composers do this with repetitive musical phrases, and good businesses do this by listening to their customers, learning from what they hear, and making ongoing small improvements to their product or service.

We are painfully aware of the importance of listening to crowdSPRING’s users and have put some processes in place which we hope will give us the ability to respond quickly and nimbly to the feedback, insights, and complaints that you send us. We have placed a “contact us” link in the footer section of every page and so far we have received hundreds of inquiries, observations, and suggestions, along with plenty of well meant (and often well deserved) grousing, exceptions, and objections.

We have already begun to put some of your ideas in effect. Our zoom tool is a case-in-point; several users asked for the ability to look at images more closely in the grid view and we immediately recognized how useful this feature would be. Two days later, Sean had a working prototype and we had it in place on the third day. We are also working on ways to implement a number of other suggested changes (these range from giving each submission a unique “ID” to facilitate collaboration, to allowing voting by the “crowd,” to a new tool built to help Buyers write better project briefs).

We are working on lots of similar suggestions and requests and by the time we launch next month (with our new Home Page in place) many of these features and enhancements will be in place and many more will follow in quick updates to the site. Keep an eye on us as we roll these changes out, and (at the risk of sounding “iterative”) please, please, please keep the suggestions coming.

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Protecting Your Creative Works

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

The Internet has changed our lives. It has also made it easier to copy, distribute and profit from someone else’s creativity. Although people know that taking someone’s iPOD without permission is theft, many people forget that taking an article, graphic, logo design, illustration or photograph found on the Internet, without the permission of the author, is also theft. Anyone who creates something and reduces it to a tangible form – whether in the form of an article, picture, graphic, music, lyrics, movie, or something else – is the rightful owner of that intellectual property. The owner of intellectual property has the right to reproduce or permit someone else to reproduce their intellectual property.

How can creatives protect their own intellectual property? There are a number of practical steps that every creative should consider when posting their works on the Internet. Here are five:

1. Place a copyright notice on your work. The laws of most countries protect creative work, even if a copyright notice does not appear on the work. However, it is a good practice to put a copyright notice on your work, where appropriate. A notice lets others know that this is your work. This is easy to do (see the crowdSPRING logo below).

cs-logo.jpg

2. Participate in online venues that respect your intellectual property. There are important differences between online sites for creatives. One important difference involves intellectual property. On some sites, creatives may unknowingly give up – often without pay – their intellectual property. In fact, some sites expressly say so in their terms of service or user agreement. It is important for creatives to understand the conditions under which they participate in online marketplaces or on various sites. For example, in paragraph 9 of crowdSPRING’s user agreement (http://www.crowdspring.com/user-agreement), we clearly state that others are not permitted to take your work without your prior written consent.

3. Protect your intellectual property with legal agreements. Although people will enter into transactions for intellectual property online without a legal agreements, most realize that it is very important to protect intellectual property with a legal agreement. For example, without clear terms specifying, among other things, payment and the rights that a creative would retain to their intellectual property (such as the right to display the work in a portfolio ), such transactions can result in serious disputes. Whenever possible, protect the sale of your intellectual property with a legal agreement. (more…)

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Ideas on the playing field

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

“Ultimate good…is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

We are here for two kinds of people. One is the small business owner who has a problem: where to find high quality creative services at a price they can afford, and with the risk involved reduced to near zero. Two is the creative professional who wants to compete on a playing field that is truly level; a place where resumé, client list, location, and hourly rates are beside the point. The point for both of these people is this: all that matters is one thing – how good is an idea. For the buyer the ability to choose among the ideas they are presented with, and for the contributor a competition based purely on the quality of their work.

Great ideas are a reflection of the people who bring them to life. I look at a wonderful concept and imagine that it must have been fun to create. crowdSPRING is a marketplace for ideas first and foremost. Bring ‘em on and let’s see which one the market chooses.

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Convergence

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

“All that goes up, converges.” -Teilhard de Chardin

Sometimes ideas just find one another. In the sumer of 2006 I was pursuing acquisitions in the film/video post-production industry and working on a plan to outsource pieces of the digital workflow to India.

The companies I was chasing were using a workflow that had not been seriously reconsidered for over 100 years. The process had transitioned from the physical cutting and glueing together of celluloid film to the manipulation of digital bits on high-powered work stations, but the people who performed the work were still using the same process that editors and visual effects professionals had been using, well, forever.

Why not deconstruct the process? Break it down into its component parts, rearrange them, re-distribute them, and save time and money while producing a high-quality creative work product. Artists in India were using the same equipment, the same software, and the same processes to achieve wonderfully creative results in video editing and motion graphics. There was an opportunity to leverage the capacity available in India to achieve significant savings while maintaining industry-standard results and high quality creative work.

To me, the major insight was that there were people all over the world with skills and tools to do the job, but without access to the work itself. Why shouldn’t a motion graphic artist in India be allowed to compete on a level playing field with one in Chicago?

This is the convergence: digital workflow to India, and the crowdSPRING view of a level playing field. We believe that all creative people, regardless of the depth their experience, the level of their education, or the quality of their office furniture should be allowed to compete based purely on their talent, their ideas, and their work product. The purity of this idea strikes us as fair and honest: in the crowdSPRING model a student can truly and fairly compete with a seasoned professional. May the best ideas converge and may the best work win.

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About Respect

Monday, March 10th, 2008

We often forget that for every Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, there are countless others who love to play basketball, play the violin, write, draw, design, make music, govern or create unique things. We forget too that there was only one Michael Jordan, one Leonardo da Vinci, one Si Da Ming Zhu, one Josephine Baker, one Albert Einstein, one Golda Meir…

Respect is about many things. It is about working together. It is about understanding that people have different views. It is about building communities. And it is about fairness.

What does respect have to do with crowdSPRING?

For the past 13 years, I have practiced in a field – law – that is often ridiculed because it is commonly thought that lawyers do not respect each other, judges, clients or the law. And for some, this is a very real and unfortunate criticism. I like to think that I have always followed a different path. I have never thought that age, experience, or education are the most important criteria by which one can decide whether someone is good at what they do. I have worked with many experienced , Ivy League-educated lawyers who were not nearly as talented as those who were young and educated in a public law school. Fundamentally, whether one talks about law, sports, music, writing, or anything else, results speak louder than education and experience. A young lawyer, when given a chance, can shine. A young artist, writer, photographer musician, or designer, when given a chance and allowed to compete fairly, can show their creativity.

When Mike and I first came up with the idea for crowdSPRING, we realized that there were many people who could not effectively pursue their passions in an environment that did not respect them. Designers, artists, writers, musicians. People from all continents and dozens of countries — Africa, China, South America, Europe, Asia, Russia, and the United States, among many others. It is not a coincidence that of the three fundamental principles that guide us (level playing field, choice and the protection of intellectual property), the level playing is first. And we did not randomly come to that conclusion. We talked to people. We reached out to designers and writers, to photographers and musicians, and asked them to help us build a community and a marketplace that respects ideas and the people that contribute to the community.

We have a long way to go. There are many in the world that find it difficult to respect level playing fields. Whether in politics, art, sports, business, it is human nature to be protective of one’s domain. But we fundamentally believe that if allowed to compete fairly, honestly, and in an environment driven by results, creatives can show their passion and respect for each other.

We have been humbled by the reaction we have received. We have been humbled too by the talented designers and artists around the world, united by a common passion for their art. Maybe there are not among them the next generation of Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky or Paul Rand. What if there are?

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On Collaboration

Friday, March 7th, 2008

“I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker…. But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.” – Paul Schrader

I grew up in the film industry where one’s success, even survival, depends in large part on your ability to behave collaboratively. The process of making a film can involve literally hundreds of people – each practicing their own craft to contribute their bit to the larger whole. Artists in many fields climb this mountain this everyday. Writers and illustrators, logo designers, photographers and art directors, composers and musicians – all have to display an openness to one another’s ideas and a willingness to compromise.

In many ways the process of starting a business should be comparable. Ross and I have worked hard to find ways in which we can comfortably and effectively collaborate, the end goal to build a better crowdSPRING. We very consciously ask for and listen to input from the entire team. We make an effort to involve everyone here in all aspects of the company (anyone else out there ask for their software developer’s opinions on the design of the new office space?).

It isn’t always easy. We have different approaches to processes and people, and different perspectives on what is “good.” Ross and I often write together – everything from blog posts, to our business plan, to letters to our investors. One of us will complete a draft of a document and send it along to the other. We will take turns sending red-lined versions back and forth, each successive version showing less red ink. We joke about reducing the document view to 40% to see how bad the “bloodbath” is. Our process can be difficult sometimes, but we both recognize that it is the final product that counts and that the work is improved by using two sets of eyes, two perspectives, and two voices together.

We approach our business in much the same way – a back and forth process of idea generation, iteration, and (hopefully) productivity.

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Creativity and Community

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

“If you’re going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. With creativity, if you don’t win, you’re usually no worse off than if you hadn’t played.“ – Scott Adams

Every day at work we eat lunch together. We take 30 or 40 minutes and we all hang out and talk about movies, politics, business, and “stuff.” We have formed our own small community, and lunch is one of the great parts of the day. Not only has it engendered a closeness among us, it allows us to feel conformable sharing our thoughts and ideas.

Just as our dining table is a place for us to gather, we hope that crowdSPRING will be a place where creatives from around the world can interact, share their creativity, view one another’s work, and teach and learn from each other. We want to give users endless possibilities to interact and to learn about and enjoy one another.

How do we enable creative people the world over to share their vision, their work, and their knowledge? In our last post we commented on how artists need to create and that their urge to create is universal. They just can’t seem to stop themselves. And while they continue to create and create and create, their studios fill with their paintings and sculptures, and their hard drives fill with their essays, their music, and their photographs. A problem that many artists (particularly younger people, or people from non-traditional backgrounds) have is that they lack outlets which allow others to view their art.

In brainstorming ideas to promote community, we are focused on ways to enable our users to share their bounty. One idea is to enable crowdSPRING contributors to create slide shows of their work. Wouldn’t it be nice to have simple tools to create a DVD, or a quicktime of your online logo design or other design portfolio which you could share with others? Another idea we’re kicking around is to allow users to post virtual gallery “exhibits” of work. Much like Buyers can post projects that Contributors can submit to, why not allow Contributors to set up special rooms populated with individual or group shows? Other users could comment, ask questions, and come away with inspiration for their own work. A kind of virtual Gallery District on crowdSPRING…

Thoughts?

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Halfway There

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

“When you have completed 95 percent of your journey,
you are only halfway there.” - Japanese Proverb

What could be more natural than a trial attorney and an entertainment industry veteran teaming up to start an Internet business in Chicago? In 2006, Mike believed that a film industry workflow developed over the previous 100 years could be deconstructed and its digital “pieces” assigned to artists across the globe. Around the same time, Ross observed that people around the globe were successfully solving problems in areas that were outside their occupations and experience. Over lunch one day, these two ideas converged to form the seed of a business. This morning, almost twenty months after our conversation in 2006, and many, many conversations later, our business is taking its first baby steps.

crowdSPRING was founded on three core principles: give creatives a level playing field, offer buyers choice, and protect intellectual property for all. Those three principles define everything we do.

Creative people need to create, just as “birds gotta fly and fish gotta swim.” We believe that creativity should not be constrained, nor should it be judged on the basis of experience, education, or how fancy one’s office is – on crowdSPRING, only the work itself is important. To help level the playing field, we provide tools that allow creatives to post their portfolios, comment on the work their peers display, and engage in dialogue about their art, their process, and the tools they use. crowdSPRING is a place where creatives from around the world can interact, share their creativity, work, teach and learn from one another.

We also believe that the traditional model for the purchase and sale of creative services, including logo design and web design, is limiting and restrictive. Buyers of creative services deserve real choice and should be able to choose from actual works rather than from among the bids and proposals service providers offer. Why not allow buyers to choose a logo from among those submitted by a retiree from Miami, a graphics designer from Memphis, a student from Mumbai, a truck driver from Malaysia, or a janitor from Montreal? Multiply that list by dozens of contributors and you start to get the picture. There’s a groundswell of untapped creative talent around the world. The explosion of so-called ‘user generated content’ – from Threadless to iStockPhoto to YouTube – is proof positive that people are looking for outlets for their creative talent. crowdSPRING’s goal is to empower this underground, underdog creative community and to enable their creativity.

Finally we believe that the crowdSPRING community values the protection of intellectual property. crowdSPRING offers many tools for the protection of IP, including free customized legal agreements. We will make it simple to report violations of copyright, plagiarism, or inappropriate content on our site. We have partnered with IPRegistry.com to further help buyers and contributors in the crowdSPRING marketplace protect their intellectual property (more on this later).

Today marks a huge milestone for us. After almost twenty months of planning, debating and developing, we have launched a small invite-only Beta this morning. We invited several dozen users from around the world to help us test the marketplace before our public launch. And to show that we truly believe that there is a huge untapped creative community around the world, we have posted our first public project. Project Homepage grew out of our frustrations with the limitations of the traditional design process. What better way to put some skin in the game than to hold a “contest” to have our home page designed for us? We are offering $5,000 for the winning entry along with another $500 each to two runners-ups.

We hope you’ll find time to visit the Homepage project and watch the submissions come in. We hope that you will also take the time to comment here and let us know your thoughts. We look forward to the journey ahead.

Best wishes from Chicago,
Ross & Mike

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