On May 15th entrepreneur Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance, addressed an audience of technology entrepreneurs at the NJ Tech Meetup held on the Stevens Institute of Technology’s Hoboken campus. Behance is a web based platform that helps “remove barriers between creative talent and opportunity” by providing a central location for creative professionals to showcase their work. To understand the scale of Behance’s reach, within the past 30 days over 45 million creative projects were viewed on its web site.
As told by Scott, Behance is a story of vision, focus and perseverance that successfully ended with its acquisition by Adobe in 2012. Scott, however, makes clear that the decision to join the Adobe family was not thought of as an endbut rather as a beginning with new and greater possibilities. In addition to receiving a financial payout for their six years of hard work, the assurance that the tightly knit Behance team would be able to continue working together was critical. Joining a much larger company such as Adobe would also lessen, if not remove, the threat of market risk.
Behance was founded in 2006 by Scott with his close friend Matis Corea. Its founding premise was “to put control into the hands of countless creative professionals suffering from inefficiency, disorganization, and careers at the mercy of bureaucracy. “ Starting at a very basic level, Behance designed and produced notepads for creative professionals offering them a way to become better organized. Funds from the sale of the notepads were one way they bootstrapped the company for six years, thus avoiding the need for outside funding. In his talk Scott warned fellow entrepreneurs about accepting investor money and losing focus, “If you raise investor money too early, you may find yourself doing something you don’t love.”
During a journey of exploration, creativity and refinement spanning from startup thru the company’s acquisition, Scott and Matis focused on finding ways to help the creative community across all industries. Identifying “attribution” as another big obstacle for success, a web portal was created that served to “showcase & discover creative work”.
Once a Behance account is set up the creative professional has a place to store and update their work while promoting it widely and cost efficiently. The Behance team targeted well-known and very accomplished creative people which helped to make the site broadly accepted. This in turn benefited lesser known creative professionals by providing them with a highly regarded platform that enabled them to gain greater acknowledgment and attribution for their work. Scott hinted at some of the resolve that was required to establish their model noting, “If you are being shunned, there is a good chance you are on to something.”
Scott put forth his observation that “meritocracy, innovation and access to opportunity are not natural on the web.” He challenged the long tail theory as an effective way for discovery on the internet. He observed that too much on the web happens vertically, noting that “discovery happens in the overlap” with “95% of creative professionals following areas outside their own”. He posed, “we’ve empowered the masses without discernment. Is the crowd a good judge?” In his view it is more about the “creditable masses” and less about the “critical masses”. His believes that “when attribution is not supported, opportunity is lost. With attribution, comes discovery which leads to referral.” And this leads to an ecosystem based on meritocracy.
Concluding with some of his personal experiences, Scott shared his insights on hiring, team building, and entrepreneurship. He recently joined with co-author Jocelyn K. Glei to release a new book entitled Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind that expands on the critical observations he shared with the audience that touched upon persevering through to success and the value of investing in the right team.
