romasevastyanov

> How many of your 168 team-mates were in Ukraine?

Around ~100 right now.

> Any specific experiences you/they can share on how they coped with the struggles and things that worked for them?

Yes! We are planning to cover another article just on this topic.

Main things which we used:

1) Free 1to1 with therapists

2) Group sessions with therapists

3) Unlimited PTO

4) Financial support

5) In case a teammate is in the danger area, proactive support for evacuation

6) Real-time monitoring of the situation + updates to the team

7) "Believe in better times, and what we'll do there"

Thanks, see you on demo!

> What kind of rates are you paying the people who're actually doing the work, though?

We pay middle and middle+ rates in locations where we hire designers. So, Awesomic designers get the same or even more than other designers in the same location. Also, we have paid days off, and we are working on free health care program for our designers. So, does Upwork has paid day-offs or free health care program?

> And what's your plan for when the funding runs out - are you gonna follow Uber's path and start shaving more and more out of what the designers get?

We've been profitable for two years before we joined YC. Even now, we are profitable and haven't used YC's $125k. Still, we are raising money to hire more developers to build a better product – platform. Create an excellent product with AI – is super hard and expensive.

> if a client and designer who you matched up decide they would like to pursue a working relationship outside of your app without paying you your cut for future work, do you consider this a success, or a failure?

In two years working on this concept – we haven't had any cases like that. Designers like to work with Awesomic because they can grow and develop new skills on different projects. I am always happy when we deliver a great project after long cooperation.

Here is an example of how Norvegian startup worked with our designers for 18+ months in a row – https://www.awesomic.io/case-study/entirebody

Awesomic does not re-sell human hours like Upwork. Instead, we guarantee a business result. So the time designer spends on a task is more depending on the type of task.

Some tasks are really possible to complete within one day – like banner ads. However, some tasks require iterating a week over week to fully complete – like a good website created from scratch. In this case, you'll receive everyday updates to see the progress. The whole speed depends on designer output and feedback from clients.

The best way is to ask the designer for a kind estimation when the deadline matters. With urgent projects you can double/triple your subscription, for example, for this exact month, so more designers would be able to connect and deliver results faster.

Hi, thanks for your attention! Yes, that is correct and then you need to check tons of portfolios and find a relevant one.

Then you would negotiate a price, project size, and terms. It takes days including delays in answers and timezones.

Once you start working with someone online, it doesn't guarantee that this person will deliver work on time or do not disappear in the middle of a project (we had this before Awesomic ourselves). So the search is starting over.

Modern design projects typically require different sets of skills too – UI&UX, branding/logo design, graphic design, or illustrations. So typically designer is good at one main field or style, and others are minors. That multiplies the complexity of finding the right designer in a long-term.

With Awesomic, you always get matched with the best person for your task on the same day and get the first result on the next business day.

> Not sure how competing with firms with the exact same business model on Clutch requires VC funding, but OK. Best of luck.

We are not competing with agencies from Clutch, that's our second target audience after startups. We help agencies scale faster while working with designers on the platform.

Awesomic is not an agency, it's a super simple tool where you can start working with a designer on the same day. And then constantly receive everyday updates on your design task.

Why do we need VC? Because we have 0 design managers and have no plans to hire ones. Instead, everything is managed by our product – platform. Most of the tasks are matched automatically by an algorithm.

And for the designer – Awesomic is a better solution versus platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. Designers don't like to hunt for the next freelance project, feel insecure to negotiate, but they are passionate about design. So Awesomic gives them what they want while caring about everything else.

Hey, thank you for noticing our name! We were initially named Pizdata which literally means "fucking amazing" in Ukrainian (where we are originally from).

We got a lot of local hype, word of mouth clients and even became an internet meme in Romania (where it has a very different meaning). Decided to change a name because of international clients not getting the joke (right after we tested early hypothesis).

Awesomic has the same meaning – "awesome on a cosmic level", by Urban Dictionary.

Here's a blog post where I described effect of such an aggressive naming – http://awesomic.io/blog/startup-journey-to-100-k