Cool and Creative Serial Entrepreneurship: 99Designs and DeveloperAuction Co-Founder Matt Mickiewicz (Part 4)

Sramana: Why did you decide to raise money?

Matt Mickiewicz: To expand our marketing and increase customer acquisition. We also wanted to pursue international expansion. We used the money to hire a chief marketing officer, a chief financial officer and expand internationally, which included language expansion. Recruiting in San Francisco is much easier when you have strong financial backing. When you tell people you are bootstrapped and profitable, they don’t necessarily see it as a good thing. After we had the VC backing, we were able to grow the company from 40 people to 80 people.

Sramana: What kind of marketing strategies do you follow today?

Matt Mickiewicz: Our VP of marketing has done radio advertising, podcast sponsorships, and we invest heavily in our affiliate program. We don’t have a single magic bullet. We do traditional brand marketing now.

Sramana: Where have you gone with your international expansion?

Matt Mickiewicz: We have gone into France, Italy, Germany, and Latin America. That means we have translated our offering into all of those languages as well. We are aggressively chasing opportunities throughout the globe.

Sramana: What is the footprint of the designers on your site? Where are they located?

Matt Mickiewicz: We have a huge pool of U.S. designers who use us for lead generation. Rather than writing proposals, they create work through us to find clients they can maintain a one on one relationship with into the future. We also have a significant pool of designers in Europe and Asia as well.

Sramana: You had to convince designers and buyers to shift their mentalities and work with a new business flow. How did you do that?

Matt Mickiewicz: On the designer side, we had a massive pool of creative talent that had limited access to opportunities. They were great at design, but probably not as great at business design. They were not in Manhattan charging $100,000 for a logo.

We also made a strategic business decision to leave a lot of info outside of our registration firewall. Both customers and designers are able to browse all active projects on the site. They can see what customers offer for the various projects and how diverse the projects are. That also lets customers see the quality of work delivered.

We took risk reduction to its maximum extreme. We offer a 100% money-back guarantee in the event you do not like any of the designs submitted. You can call the customer service team and get your money back in a matter of seconds.

Sramana: What types of graphic design categories do you offer?

Matt Mickiewicz: We offer a very wide range of options. You can do anything from logos to wine labels, brochures, movie posters, clothing, and almost anything else you can think of. Web design is probably the most complex because it is really hard to use words to describe words the layout of a webpage. We encourage clients to provide wire diagrams and sketches. Product packaging is somewhat unusual because there are specific package sizes. Clothing and brochures are rather standardized. Logos and business cards are definitely the easiest to produce.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Cool and Creative Serial Entrepreneurship: 99Designs and DeveloperAuction Co-Founder Matt Mickiewicz
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