FounderBuzz

Transcript by Speechpad:

Scott: Hi, I'm Scott Olson with FounderBuzz, and I'm here today with Mike Samson of crowdSPRING. Thanks for joining us, Mike.

Mike: Thanks, Scott. It's really nice to be here.

Scott: Great I'm a big fan of crowdSPRING, but why don't you start off by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Mike: Sure. Well, I'll flip it; I'll talk about the company first, because it's more important than I am. crowdSPRING is a marketplace for creative services. We use a crowdsourcing model. We have a large community of designers and writers. We have about 87,000 folks. They come from almost 200 countries around the world, and we use a crowdsourcing model.

So what happens on crowdSPRING, a buyer comes to the site in need of creative services, for instance, a logo for their new company. They write a creative brief, they name a price, they set the duration for the project, and they post their project to the site. In turn, the creatives, designers in this case, submit actual work designed to the buyer's specifications. So, in a logo project, they submit actual logos based on what the buyer has described they need and their company and their audience. The buyer gives feedback, can rate and comment on the various entries. In turn, the creatives revise and iterate; and at the end of the process, the buyer simply picks the one that they like best. We provide a legal contract, as well as escrow and payment services, and various project management tools, file uploading, handling, commenting and feedback tools. At the end of the project, the buyer gets their logo, and that winning creative gets paid the award that the buyer offered.

Scott: As I mentioned, I'm a big fan. I've done many projects with you guys successfully. One of the things that always amazed me, and I'd be really interested in your insight, is how do you get the designers to submit work when it's so competitive? I mean, on some of my projects, I've had well over a hundred entries, and so you're getting great work, a lot of choices, and I certainly see the advantage for the buyer. But on the designer side, how do you get them to continue to participate?

Mike: There are a couple of things. First of all, your experience is not unusual. The average project on the site receives over 110 entries currently. Designers participate for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, they hope to win. They hope to win that award that you offer. So if you offer $500 for your project, they're competing to win.

But there are other reasons and other things that keep them engaged, and these are really the important things and an important part of the formula, we think. Number one, we're a community. We offer a lot of community features, and we value the members of our community. So people feel connected to this community and to the site, and that keeps them coming back. In addition, they tell us over and over again that they're not just there to earn the awards that are up for grabs, but they're also there to learn. They watch what their peers are doing, and they learn a lot from their peers. They're there to work with real-life clients, not experiments and not made-up projects to build out their portfolio. But they have the opportunity to work in real time with real clients and to help those clients solve problems. That's very valuable to the creatives.

Third, a lot of them do it just to keep sharp. So we've heard from, for instance, veteran agency creative directors who come to the site and participate in logo projects, and they do it because in their day job, they don't get to do that and they just love doing it. So sometimes they get frustrated, and they move on. They might participate in 10 or 20 or 50 projects. They may or may not win, and they get tired and move on. In other cases, they do win. They do build a book of business suit sites. A lot of these folks are coming here to look for clients for their business, and they're finding them. We have very successful creatives who will work with us for a year or more and win a bunch of projects, and then they build up such a book of business they just don't have time to participate in projects at that point. We consider that to be a real success. That's really what we're going for. We're here to help these folks.

Scott: I think that the quality reflects that, and it certainly shows what you guys are doing. That's kind of on the designer side. But do you have any advice for an entrepreneur out there who's getting started and they're looking at their design, what advice would you give them about designing their logo, other than going with crowdSPRING?

Mike: Well, branding is critical to any business, particularly a startup or a small business just getting off the ground. A brand identity is really an important thing, and people know this. It's one of the first things people do when they're starting their companies. A good brand, a good logo, for instance, can really communicate a great deal about your product or your service or whatever your offering is, and it is critical to find an appropriate logo, an appropriate brand identity. crowdSPRING is a great tool for that, for a lot of reasons.

Number one, if you're on a budget, it really is a great option. Number two, the choice is massive. You mentioned over 100 entries on some of your projects, and that kind of choice is really phenomenal in the creative services industry. The most important thing I think that a buyer can do is take the time to write a great creative brief. Really explain to the designers what your business is, who your customers are, what you're trying to accomplish, what the look and feel of the thing is. If you take your time to carefully write a detailed brief that really lays all of that out, you're going to get better results, and you're going to get proposals and entries from the creatives that really can address your brand and what you're trying to do with your brand.

Scott: That's great. I certainly appreciate your time. I know you're very busy, but as an aside, the FounderBuzz logo was created on crowdSPRING. So people can see an example of a successful project right on my site.

Mike: That's fantastic.

Scott: I really appreciate you taking the time today, Mike.

Mike: It's my pleasure, and please have folks reach out to us if they have any questions or need any help. We're always happy to help.

Scott: Great, I sure will.