The creative-portfolio company Belsky bootstrapped then sold
Belsky built Behance to organize the disorganized creative world by inverting the portfolio model so work is searchable and discoverable. The journey was a decade-long grind, not an overnight success.
“long slog. I mean, Behance was 5 years of bootstrapping, 2 years as a venture-backed business, acquired by Adobe, 3 years of integration.”
While still running Behance with no business angel investing, Belsky met Pinterest's Ben Silbermann in 2010 through his intern. Pinterest pins were driving growing traffic to Behance, which tipped him off to the opportunity.
“my first ever investment was Pinterest. So I met Ben Silverman back in 2010, and I had no business being an angel investor. I was just leading my own company.”
Belsky's counterintuitive lesson from Behance: when they killed major features like the tip exchange and groups, usage of the core product actually went up and the team gave it more attention. Feature insecurity dilutes the core.
“the insecurity of shipping many features in a product is basically I don't know what's going to work, right? But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them, what you find is that the core stuff gets used more and gets more attention from the team too.”
Steal thisKill secondary features; usage and team focus migrate to your core, often lifting engagement.
Scott Belsky built Behance through 5 years of bootstrapping (funded by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences), raised only $6-7M right before exit, and sold to Adobe for about $150 million.
“He sold that company for about $150 million, and when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped. He eventually, uh, raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that money like right before they sold. So, they had built most of the business without funding. And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences.”
Scott Belsky built Behance through 5 years of bootstrapping (funded by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences), raised only $6-7M right before exit, and sold to Adobe for about $150 million.
“He sold that company for about $150 million, and when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped. He eventually, uh, raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that money like right before they sold. So, they had built most of the business without funding. And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences.”
Before Behance was a software platform, Belsky bootstrapped it by making physical 'Action Books' — paper organizers for creatives. Giving one to Garrett Camp is literally how the Uber pitch came his way.
“so we were bootstrapping our business, Behance, early days with paper products of all things. We were making paper products for creatives to be organized. They were like actual paper. And they're called Action Books. They're actually still out there.”
Belsky's counterintuitive lesson from Behance: shipping many features is really insecurity about what will work. When they killed major features (a tip exchange and groups), usage of the core product actually went up and the team focused more.
“But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them, what you find is that the core stuff gets used more and gets more attention from the team too.”
Steal thisAudit your feature list and kill the side features — watch core usage and team focus climb.