My guest today is a driven and strategic leader, creator, and mentor.
Ross Kimbarovsky immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in 1979. Following a 13 year career as a successful trial attorney, about 14 years ago, Ross founded Crowdspring.
He began his career as a trial attorney, where he successfully spent 13 years representing clients in intellectual property disputes.
But back in 2006, he stumbled across an opportunity and turned his idea into a reality. For the past 14 years, he’s been the founder and CEO of Crowdspring. Crowdspring has helped to democratize design around the world. Over 220,000 creatives from 195 countries have helped more than 60,000 of the world’s best entrepreneurs, small businesses, startups, and agencies with logo, web, and graphic design.
What began as an idea to scratch his own itch has turned into a pioneer and forerunner in the world of online design.
Now, let’s hack…
Ross Kimbarovsky.
Highlights from the interview
- [05:58]: There’s a lot of advice out there about competition, ranging from ignoring it entirely, to paying close attention to it. Ross used to prefer to ignore competition and focus on his own endeavors, but he found that he needed to evaluate competition to better understand the market, and to find a better product-market fit.
- [09:25]: When Crowdspring launched in 2008, they wanted a new business model different from existing competitors like 99Designs and Elance. Rather than use a bid and proposal system in the style of Elance (now Upwork), they took a spec work approach, where the client describes what they need and creators can submit their designs.
- [30:53]: Being a remote team already helped Crowdspring adapt quickly to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’d initially had a physical office, but had eliminated it a few years ago. Because freelance design work via platforms like Crowdspark is already remote, the business continued to thrive during the pandemic.
- [34:43]: Ross feels that when he first started Crowdspring, he didn’t fully appreciate the importance of product. He’d put a lot of emphasis on getting buzz, as well as on differentiating from other similar platforms. But at the end of the day, having the best product is what has led Crowdspring to so much success.
Resources and links from the episode
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