Behance – From Bootstrapping To $6.5 Million
Founded in 2006 and launched less than a year later, online platform Behance recently announced that it will be receiving its first round of outside funding. Led by Union Square Ventures, this $6.5 million includes notable investors such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (from his own personal investment fund), Dave Tisch, Chris Dixon, Yves Behar, Alexis Ohanian, Garrett Camp, Dave Morin, and Dave McClure.
Bootstrapping Behance
Based in New York City, Behance has been bootstrapping itself for the past five years. The site´s success has grown continuously, and it has become an important online destination for creative portfolios and galleries. Here, creative professionals are able to showcase, connect, and discover creative work. Categories include animation, graphic design, photography, interior design, and fashion among others. Behance´s Prosite also includes a portfolio builder and custom website creation tools for designers and artists.
Behance Redesign And Stats
Behance had a major site redesign in March. Back then, 1 million projects had been created to date, and it was launching over 20 thousand new projects each week. Since then, its network has doubled. Searches for creators increased by 70 percent. Visitors have viewed the projects over a billion times, and “appreciated” projects over 22 million times. Over 10 thousand personal websites have been created. In addition, a few weeks ago Behance passed another important milestone with over 2 million projects created. The curation team for Behance now reviews about 30,000 projects each week to feature among the company´s various gallery sites.
The Future Of Behance
With all this recent growth, CEO and co-founder Scott Belsky feels Behance saw an opportunity to take the company even further. The team hopes to continue building more products that can serve creators by enhancing the offerings on Prosite and developing more tools to support collaboration between creatives as well as between creatives and clients.
