Entrepreneur Interview: Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson, crowdSPRING

Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson

Business Name:
crowdSPRING

Website URL:
www.crowdSPRING.com

Year Founded:
2008

Number of Employees:
11

What does your company do?
crowdSPRING is a leading online marketplace for buyers and sellers of creative services. crowdSPRING offers logo design, web design, other types of graphic design, industrial design and writing services (such as company names) at an affordable price. On an average crowdSPRING project, a buyer will receive more than 110 concepts.

Was there a specific turning point when you realized your business was moving to the next level?

When we started with an online community of six and two years later we have 75,000+ creatives, more than 12,000 buyers and big brands such as LG, Barilla, Air New Zealand, Philips Electronics and Forbes are turning to us for crowdsourcing projects.

What processes or procedures have you implemented that have helped grow your company?
Differentiated ourselves from other through the use of social media, developing and publicizing industry “firsts”, thought leadership (awards and speaking opportunities) and making ourselves scalable to reach a global market.

We have essentially worked out to go up against our critics to help level the playing field for the little guy.  We have made time, title and location irrelevant in the creative world.

Creative crowdsourcing has been so successful that it has presented a fierce challenge to the traditional agency model and they are struggling to see how crowdSPRING will impact their current set-up.

What is most rewarding about running your business?
The support we have received from our creative community.

What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?
The challenges crowdSPRING faced included:

Developing a system that would give us the ability to accept payment from many countries for the volume we do (one reason we picked PayPal)

Ability to pay around the world. Most banks can’t do this and most services far too limited. Again, a reason we picked PayPal and also have wire transfers available for countries that don’t accept PayPal payments

Different intellectual property regulations around the world

Customizing contracts for language, laws, etc.

Local competitors spring up to take bites from local market share (focusing on local markets)

Determining if language is important (localization)

The opportunities we uncovered included:
Global audience of buyers

Global audience of service providers

And…because this is a complex problem to solve, less competition on a global scale

If you were starting over today, what would you do differently?
We’ve learned many important lessons along the way. Here is our biggest problem and what we learned from our mistakes:

Problem:

Build a website that could not fully scale as traffic and registrations to the site increased.  The underlying problems were the result of the way our application was written and the structure of the content management system (CMS) that we were using.  We needed to be able to properly scale with increased traffic and use.

What We Learned From Our Mistakes

Here are five important lessons we’ve learned:

1. Full Transparency Builds Real Trust And True Respect.

2. Failure Educates and Motivates.

3. Question Your Own Assumptions. Always.

4. Do The Right Thing, Even If It Hurts You.

5. Focus.

What advice do you have for other business owners?
Here are some other key findings we had during the initial start-up that we can share with your audience:

Keep focused on your core business.    Companies that don’t focus on their core business will cede leadership and market share to those who do.

Startups and small businesses must find ways to differentiate from their competitors and to understand their competitive advantages. For many companies, especially in very competitive industries, customer service is one of the most important competitive advantages.  Poor reputation for customer service has even forced large companies to completely change their branding.

Maintain brand consistency.

Many startups and small businesses mistakenly modify their brand message depending on their audience (or short-change certain audiences altogether).

To build and maintain a strong brand, every aspect of your brand should be as good as your product or service and you must be consistent in presenting your brand to prospects and customers.   This includes everything from your name and logo to your products and services.

Look hard at exactly what people are contacting you about and consider this data when making decisions on improvements, new features, services, policies, etc.

Decide ahead of time your social media strategy and how much effort you plan to put into social media.

Please list any favorite books, tools or resources (software, website, etc.) you would recommend for others:
Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good – Sarah Lacy

Band of Rivals: the Lincoln bio: talk about an entrepreneurial approach to politics and the greatest team builder ever….

TweetDeck

Google Analytics

Seesmic

Tweetie

Posterous

BackType

Radian6

truVOICE

What is something that people might be surprised to learn about you?
Co-founder Mike Samson was formerly a successful Hollywood actor and producer.

Co-founder Ross Kimbarovsky is actually an intellectual property lawyer who always had a dream of starting a tech company.  He left the corporate world to start crowdSPRING but also so he could wear shorts and flip-flops to work.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
There are nearly 50 categories on crowdSPRING, including:

Graphic design:  logo and stationary, clothing, CD/book covers, package graphics, brochure designs and illustrations

Web design:  landing pages, banner ads, uncoded websites or pages, buttons, widgets, apps and blog page layouts

Industrial design:  actual package designs and product designs

Writing services:  company, product and domain naming; poetry, lyrics, short story, book and essay writing; resume, press release, marketing collateral, manuals, presentations, speeches, articles, business plans, tagline writing; and web content, newsletter, SEO/SEM, blog entry writing

Awards:

Chicago Innovation Award 2010

Stevie Award for New Product or Service of the Year in the 2009 American Business Award

Wired (magazine) Small Biz of 2008

One of five companies in the world nominated for a 2009 Webby Awards for Community