Press

Behance Portfolio Review Week Coverage

Another Behance Portfolio Review has wrapped up and once again, creatives have gathered across the globe to meet and present their work. Check out some outstanding global coverage both before, during and after the events!

Collection of some notable articles:

 

Behance Co-Founders Featured in Business Insider’s “Coolest People in New York Tech” List

Business Insider published a round up of “the coolest people in New York tech this year” and Behance co-founders Scott Belsky and Matias Corea were included! They write, “Belsky and Corea bootstrapped design site Behance for six years before raising any money. Two million published products have been viewed more than one billion times on Behance.”

Read more.

Behance exec shares “dog food” recipe to API enthusiasts

Eating your own dog food,” is a term that means demonstrating confidence in a product by using the product one’s self, often credited to the late 1980s culture at Microsoft.

But online portfolio startup, Behance—self-described as the LinkedIn of the creative world—has embraced the “dog food”philosophy in its API strategy. At today’s Business of APIs Conference in New York, Behance’s home city, chief of software architecture Bryan Latten shared the four ingredients of the company’s secret dog food sauce:

  1. Model your own workflow: The idea behind eating your own dog food is that you should create an API that your own company would want to use. Which means, step one, according to Latten, is to know your corporate workflow.
  2. Repurpose your data, make it different: Once executives identify possible ways the data might be broken up they should take a moment to look at it with fresh eyes. Try to view the data from different perspectives and figure out new ways to interpret what it means.
  3. Use non-developers for feedback: Latten said there’s nothing like hearing a chief executive with little or no understanding of the technology behind an API react to new proposals. But that’s just one example. Ask your loved ones (if they’re not already tired of your entrepreneurial rantings), your customers, and anyone willing to listen, and give thoughtful feedback.
  4. Perform practice maintenance. Seriously: We reached out to Latten after he spoke and asked him to break this one down for us in different terms, and he asked us a question, “Will your clients now when you’ve made a change or will the new version be seamless?” He said those incorporating changes to an API should practice the transition on an offline database to make sure when the new version actually goes live there aren’t any glitches.

Behance was founded in 2006 and is a platform that makes it easier for creative professionals to reach their audience. They have a think tank and conference called 99U, formerly The 99 Percent, devoted to researching best practices of productive and creative people. Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that Behance, which was at the time growing at a rate of 1,000 members per day, would cease work on a planned redesign and focus on its “creative graph,”charting the connections of freelancers and small business owners similarly to Facebook’s social graph.

Read the full article here. 

Two Interesting Theories About Instagram’s Success Applicable To Other Products

This week we held our annual IGNITION conference on the future of media, and one of the panels brought together some of the smartest people from visually-based internet companies to discuss the rise of the visual web.

Business Insider deputy editor Nicholas Carlson asked the panelists why they thought Instagram was such a huge success in a market and a time that had a number of visual apps and tools in competition.

Behance founder Scott Belsky said that the “ego analytics” associated with the product, or centering the product around “likes” and popularity, were a big reason for the app to take off.

Charles Forman, founder and CEO of PictureLife, said that Instagram’s success was due to a hard-to-describe technical facility.

In the context of other visual applications, “Instagram felt like butter,” and all the other applications, especially Facebook, felt like sandpaper,” said Forman.

Both of “ego analytics” and “like butter” effect are surely applicable to other apps and products.

Watch the discussion below.

The Promise of Having an Impact

ED ZIMMERMAN:When we opened our Palo Alto office almost five years ago, we wanted a partner who would not only be a great cultural fit, but also  sought someone we trusted to help establish a culture. We found my friend and, at the time, client, Kathi Rawnsley. She was extremely entrepreneurial and willing to start from scratch. Our initial office was her dining room table and when I arrived that first week, it held more of her daughter’s dolls than client documents.

Kathi was eager to start, wasn’t a prima donna about doing all her own stunts and was ready to go door-to-door to explain our story. This comports with Scott Belsky’sexperience building Behance, the online platform to showcase and discover creative work:  “Startups often try to make themselves look more established than they are, but the right folks in an early team are excited for the challenge of a somewhat undefined role and the ability to change and make history.” Some people need a strong brand and large infrastructure to feel comfortable. Others crave the opportunity their absence presents.

Kathi had attended numerous events we’d hosted and had been “part of the conversation” we had been creating within the entrepreneurial and venture community. Belsky too had created his own conversation for Behance by, among other things, starting a great blog. Belsky advised:  “Contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a thought leader. When you’re recruiting talent, your blog posts and public speaking about the startup process go a long way.” What began as a blog in 2007 morphed into his Wall Street Journal-best selling book Making Ideas Happen.

Keep reading here.