Founder of Behance and former Adobe Chief Product Officer; author and investor, now a partner at A24.
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.”
Belsky's signature insight from The Messy Middle: founders avoid unscalable work as a waste of time, but the things that distinguish a brand are precisely those that don't scale, like Airbnb sending photographers to every apartment.
“The art of business is the things that don't scale. And then it's like, okay, what is that? Right. Unpack that. Yeah, unpack that. And so that will be like a 2 or 3 page section about how we sort of perseverate over all the science nuances. And actually our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses that doesn't scale because we feel like that's a waste of time. When in fact, a lot of the greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale, like Airbnb sending out photographers for every apartment.”
Steal thisIdentify the deliberately unscalable thing only your company does, and protect it as you grow.
Belsky argues onboarding is the only part of a product every customer experiences, yet teams treat it as the last thing they build. Nailing the first mile largely determines a product's fate.
“one is obsessing over the first mile of the user's experience of the product, which ironically typically is the last mile that the team spends actually thinking about. And yet it's the only part of the product experience that every customer will in fact experience.”
Steal thisPolish onboarding first, not last; it is the only experience 100% of users will have.
Belsky's rule for designing onboarding: assume new users won't extend any faith and shouldn't, because their lives are too busy. Cater to that selfishness before expecting any investment of effort.
“every customer, as great as they be and as wonderful as your product may be, every customer is lazy, vain, and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds of using your product. How are you going to cater to them at that, in that world before? And I think the mistake we make is we have to— we expect our customers to have too much faith in us as product builders. They don't care.”
Steal thisDesign the first 30 seconds assuming the user is lazy, vain, and selfish and owes you nothing.
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 rationalized his first Pinterest investment, a good chunk of his salary, by reframing it as tuition: he'd learn from Ben's Google and West Coast network. Worst case, it was his education.
“Ben had worked at Google. He had a network on the West Coast. I was just like, you know, new entrepreneur in New York that didn't have any of that network. I actually felt like I would learn a lot from this. And so in some ways I was like, you know, I'm sort of paying for an education.”
Steal thisJustify a high-risk early investment as tuition; the relationship and learning are the floor on your return.
StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp showed Belsky sketches of an app for summoning a black car in his New York apartment. Belsky told him it was a textbook distraction; fortunately Camp ignored the advice and it became Uber.
“Literally showed me these sketches of this product where it's about summoning a black car as opposed to having to dial for it. And, um, and I'm like, dude, you should be focused on your business. You just bought it back, right?”
Belsky recalls the early Uber Cab debate over whether the brand should feel accessible to everyone or aspirational. Garrett Camp won the argument: make it feel like a superpower, everyone's private driver, hence the black, luxury identity.
“Should it be an expensive feeling brand where it looks like it's aspirational but something you couldn't afford, or should it be an accessible brand where it feels like this is something that everyone should be doing, right? And it was actually a really healthy argument because you intuitively think it should be accessible to everyone. I mean, if you want to make a big company, um, but Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower, like everyone's private driver. It should feel expensive even though it was intended to be accessible.”
Steal thisMake a mass-market product feel like an exclusive superpower; aspirational branding can coexist with broad access.
Belsky's test for which founders to invest in: does each conversation build on the last and get richer, or is it a repeat? The 'step function' founders, like the Periscope team pre-pivot, signal someone worth working with.
“One of the things I have used over the years to determine founders I want to work with as an investor is if I feel like every conversation with him or her was a step function more interesting than the one before it, or was it a repeat, right? A lot of conversations we have with people are repeats.”
Steal thisWhen evaluating founders, track whether each conversation compounds in interest; repeats are a red flag.
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.
Belsky's pitch if he were 21 today: apps were born before GPS, notifications, and AI, so a modern OS should know where you are and surface contextual superpowers that appear and vanish rather than discrete apps you download.
“There shouldn't even be apps, frankly. There should be superpowers that are suddenly there and then they're suddenly gone, right? And, and if you think about— and I think that I think that we're going towards that end. I think that we will see operating systems evolve.”
Steal thisDesign context-aware 'superpowers' that the OS surfaces and dismisses automatically instead of apps users must find and open.
Belsky's biggest takeaway from Benchmark: he expected the best investors to be future-pickers, but learned they have a deep, concrete grasp of the present and exactly how it's about to shift. Long shots are bets; present-tense insight is edge.
“I really went in there thinking the greatest investors are really good at picking the future. And when I left, they're believing is that the greatest investors have a really deep and concrete understanding of the present and how the present is like about to change.”
Steal thisTo find the next winner, master the present in granular detail and watch where it's shifting, rather than guessing distant futures.
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.”
A core Messy Middle insight: instinct says avoid anything that doesn't scale, but the things that distinguish a brand are precisely the unscalable ones — like Airbnb sending photographers to every apartment. The challenge is preserving that 'art' as you grow.
“Like, an example is the science of business is scaling, the art of business is the things that don't scale. And then it's like, okay, what is that, right? Yeah, unpack that. And so that will be like a 2 or 3 page section about how we sort of perseverate over all the, the science nuances. And actually our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses that doesn't scale because we feel like that's a waste of time, when in fact a lot of the greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale, like Airbnb sending out photographers for every apartment.”
Belsky's top product advice: the onboarding 'first mile' is the only part of the product every customer experiences, yet it's usually the last thing teams polish. After the first mile, it's all drop-off.
“You know, one is obsessing over the first mile of the user's experience of the product, which ironically typically is the last mile that the team spends actually thinking about. And yet it's the only part of the product experience that every customer will in fact experience. Right. After that, it's just drop-off.”
Steal thisSpend your last sprint polishing onboarding, not your power features — it's the only thing 100% of users will touch.
Belsky's heuristic for onboarding design: assume every new user is lazy, vain, and selfish in their first 15-30 seconds. They shouldn't have faith in you and shouldn't spend any effort until they know they'll get value.
“And I like to remind folks that every customer, as great as they may be and as wonderful as your product may be, every customer is lazy, vain, and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds of using your product. How are you going to cater them at that, in that world before. And I think the mistake we make is we have too— we expect our customers to have too much faith in us, right, as product builders. They don't care.”
Steal thisDesign onboarding for a lazy, vain, selfish user who gives you 15 seconds — prove value before you ask for any effort.
Belsky's heuristic for onboarding design: assume every new user is lazy, vain, and selfish in their first 15-30 seconds. They shouldn't have faith in you and shouldn't spend any effort until they know they'll get value.
“And I like to remind folks that every customer, as great as they may be and as wonderful as your product may be, every customer is lazy, vain, and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds of using your product. How are you going to cater them at that, in that world before. And I think the mistake we make is we have too— we expect our customers to have too much faith in us, right, as product builders. They don't care.”
Steal thisDesign onboarding for a lazy, vain, selfish user who gives you 15 seconds — prove value before you ask for any effort.
Belsky rationalized his first risky Pinterest check (a big chunk of his salary) as buying an education from Ben Silbermann, who had the West Coast network he lacked. His takeaway: when you deeply respect someone you can learn from, find a way to work with them.
“And, you know, the one or the other thing I did though to rationalize it for myself, I remember is Ben had worked at Google. He had a network on the West Coast. I was just like, you know, new entrepreneur in New York. Didn't have any of that network. I actually felt like I would learn a lot from this. And so in some ways I was like, you know, I'm sort of paying for an education.”
Steal thisJustify an early angel check by the education and relationship, not the return — then the worst case is you learned something.
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 recalls debating Garrett Camp on Uber's brand: accessible-for-everyone vs. aspirational-but-expensive. Camp insisted it should feel like a superpower — 'everyone's private driver' — which drove the black, luxury identity. Belsky agrees it was the right call.
“But Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower, like everyone's private driver. It should feel expensive even though it was intended to be accessible. And so that was part of the, you know, part of the thought behind the black kind of logo and the brand identity that like sort of suggested that feeling. The luxury, elite feel. Exactly. So I remember that debate, and I think that was also the right choice.”
Belsky's biggest do-over: he fell in love with his solution rather than the customer's problem, so months later they'd be '30 degrees off' and cherry-picking fake evidence to fit the vision instead of confronting reality.
“I think I would probably aspire for more empathy for the customer suffering the problem as opposed to my passion for the solution. I think a lot of the mistakes that I made early on was that, were that I was always like super passionate about what I know needed to happen. And then we would realize 8 months later we were like 30 degrees off and cherry-picking fake evidence that might fit.”
Steal thisFall in love with the customer's problem, not your prototype — or you'll cherry-pick evidence to defend a wrong vision.
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.
Belsky predicts that as operating systems gain awareness of location, context and AI, the app paradigm dies: instead of downloading apps, you'll get contextual 'superpowers' that appear when needed and vanish, replacing today's notification systems.
“There shouldn't even be apps, frankly. There should be superpowers. That are suddenly there and then they're suddenly gone. And, and if you think about— and I think that we're going towards that end. I think that we will see operating systems evolve. I think that the notification systems we know them today will be totally antiquated to this more, you know, actionable interface that just is always like the sixth sense, the appendage that we never know we needed.”
Belsky's takeaway from his time at Benchmark: he expected the best investors to be great at picking the future, but learned they actually have a deep, concrete grasp of the present and how it's about to shift. Distant long shots are just bets.
“I really went in there thinking the greatest investors are really good at picking the future. And what I left there believing is that the greatest investors have a really deep and concrete understanding of the present and how the present is like about to change. And you can kind of— but not, you know, distant, distant long shots are fun bets, but they're bets, right?”
Steal thisStop forecasting decades out — master the present and the small shifts already underway, then get slightly ahead of them.