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Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
Ep.1 - Full Podcast.txt
English (US)
00:00:00.120 — 00:00:34.640 · Speaker 1
How do you get out of the pain cave? It's that place where you live with your ideas before anybody else believes in them, before they've had the chance to fulfill their potential. I talked to Ben Huffman, the co-founder of contra, about the pain cave finding community and the new way of creative work for people like me.
I'm in the pain cave now, investing everything I have into this vision. Feeling like everyone on the outside doesn't get it yet. But Ben's story reminds me that I've been here before and that the only way out is through.
00:00:36.240 — 00:00:38.680 · Speaker 1
Let me crack into that, because that's really interesting.
00:00:39.640 — 00:00:43.960 · Speaker 2
I'm curious what your take on that is. You know, we're talking to a lot of people.
00:00:43.960 — 00:01:00.639 · Speaker 1
Who are founders, who are some of the most cracked designers or investors into tools. I want to explore creativity, and I want to explore how you play the inner workings of of like what? What's driving you to want to explore and create? There are people like you who are
00:01:02.040 — 00:01:25.440 · Speaker 1
doing the scary things. And so we're we're going to talk about a lot of the, you know, the community aspect of this. But I want to go to that pain cave. I kind of want to start there for a second. And I want to know, can you kind of take me to a specific moment in maybe the early days of, of either contract or creation, where everything felt like it was about to collapse?
00:01:26.560 — 00:01:27.120 · Speaker 2
Yeah,
00:01:28.200 — 00:01:30.720 · Speaker 2
man. So many times,
00:01:31.840 — 00:01:33.760 · Speaker 2
I think specifically in
00:01:35.200 — 00:03:21.150 · Speaker 2
the beginning of contra, I maybe I'll, maybe I'll use contra as a reference. But you know how like when you have a new idea, like the excitement is through the roof and it's like the honeymoon phase and you're like, wow. Like, I can work on this forever. I have all these crazy ideas, and I have this idea and that and that and that and this and whatever.
And you just want to do it all at once. And I think that's I think that's universal for everyone. When you have like whether it's like a new design or, for me, like it's like a new audio composition or like a new video, or it doesn't matter what it is, every time a project is new and novel, it's amazing. It feels great.
So in the beginning, when we were starting contra, I had that feeling. I was like, wow, this is the greatest idea ever. Like, of course, like no one wants to pay commission fees. Of course, the creative industry is going to get behind this. Of course, it's so easy to build payments and something that people actually want to use.
And all of these things like this is this is a no brainer, Commissioner. Free. This is obvious. And I remember when we first went out to raise money for contra, I was living in New York at the time. So contra was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn before it was cool. Now it's like the place to be. Everyone was like, this is the worst idea ever.
They're like, this is so stupid. They're like, how are you going to make money? Why would people want to join a website? Everyone just wants like the best people just have their own portfolio and they just want to get leads from referrals. And then the worst people are going to be on like five and Upwork and they don't care about paying commission fees.
And I was like, ah, I don't know. I was like this burgeoning creative at the time. I got my start in music production, but I had done tons of freelance work and I was super young. I had tons of imposter syndrome, and I knew I was like, look, that's probably not what the future is going to be. There's going to be all these interconnected systems.
Now, you see, X is this amazing ecosystem for creatives and designers that didn't really exist back then.
00:03:22.190 — 00:03:36.110 · Speaker 2
I just remember, like feeling so like the wind just was taken out of my sails like no one believed in it. They're like, this is dope. I and it was what they were really saying is like, I don't believe in you. I don't think you could do this, and I don't think you can build this. And
00:03:37.150 — 00:04:15.550 · Speaker 2
this didn't exist. And that was kind of like my first experience, like trying to get other people to believe in contrarian because it's a commission free model. Like, we didn't really have a lot of ways to make money in the early days, so we couldn't really just bootstrapped the revenue. So I had to just plow all my savings into it and just keep going.
But like that was one of the first examples of the pain cave. When you have all this excitement, you're like, wow, you're like, you're psyching yourself up every day and then the world just doesn't, you know, agree. And you know, that's tough. I'm sure I'm sure you have your own examples of that. But that was like one of the earliest examples specifically to contra.
00:04:15.670 — 00:04:59.470 · Speaker 1
I feel like I've lived a lot of my life in the pain cave, a lot of ideas that unfortunately didn't make it out of the pain cave. And I found it really interesting that you said what they're really saying is they don't believe in you. And it's hard sometimes when you've got this idea and it's like a mission based idea or it's just a conviction and you see it so clearly.
And I think for me, one of the things I'm learning to have to do is, is how to talk about ideas, how to try and almost like passively sell them just to get people to just to find out if I am, in fact, crazy. How do you not take it personal when someone doesn't see your vision and you're in that place and it's so painful, I think.
00:04:59.510 — 00:06:56.870 · Speaker 2
Of course you take it personally, right? Like it's very personal. You put your blood, sweat and tears into something and you put yourself out there saying like, hey, what do you think about this? And you get rejected and it hurts and it's very personal. And like, inside you're like, ah, like, I'm going to show this person, like, I'm never going to let this person invest.
I'm never going to let this person, you know, even like it. Just all the thoughts like swirling your in your head. Right. And you take it personally. There's no way not to. But I think you get rejected enough and then you get to a certain milestone and you're like, okay, wait, like I can do this. Maybe these people are wrong.
And I think over time we realize that all the good ideas are like, they're not obvious in the beginning. Anything that's good that's worth doing is probably not that obvious to a ton of people. And if it was, then it's probably not the best idea, because there'd be tons of competition and there'd be super saturated and everyone would be trying to do it.
So I don't know how to not take it personally. I've pretty much taken every single rejection, some somewhat personally. Right. And like, you know, you get jaded after a while, but then you also get resilient and you realize like, okay, like it's not about me. That person has their own life and their own experiences and their own perspective, and I'm not going to change them.
I just need to keep going and see if I can prove them wrong. And so, I don't know, I've never found a good way to not get emotional and take it personally. It's just it is. It just hurts, right? It hurts. But that's okay. As long as you're resilient, you keep going. I think you have to be the smartest. You don't have to be, you know, the person with the most money.
You just have to be the person who doesn't give up when everyone just calls you stupid over and over and over, you know we're still there, right? There's tons of people who don't believe in contour today, but we're getting bigger and we're getting bigger, and the momentum is starting to build and people are realizing like, oh, wow.
Like maybe commission free does make sense. Maybe there's other ways that these types of things can exist. I'm curious what your take on that is, because I could probably use some advice there.
00:06:56.910 — 00:07:31.750 · Speaker 1
I can't give you good advice because I take it personal every single time. The only thing I can think of is how to tell the stories better. How to. Am I? Am I framing it incorrectly? Because there are times where being mission driven in some of these ideas. It's it's like it's so obvious to me. It just seems so obvious to me.
And I know that's not the case. And so it's like I have to hold on to that mission in order to be resilient. What what's been the mission for for you when you've had to what is like fuel the resilience after that initial excitement period?
00:07:32.390 — 00:12:28.219 · Speaker 2
This kind of is like deeply ingrained in my background. But I was a computer kid. Computer nerd, um, growing up. I built my first computer when I was 13. Uh, from components, maybe even younger. Um, my dad had this friend who knew how to assemble of computers, and we had a family computer, but it was in my parents room.
I couldn't really use it. And I was like, oh man, I really want this PC. So I'd save up money, like doing chores, like doing the neighborhood chores. And I finally had enough money to like, I think it might have been like 2 or $300 for all the components to basically build my first computer, I built it. I immediately fell in love with the internet, and I'm from rural South Carolina.
There's not a lot to do there. It's fun to be on the lake. You can like, you know, whatever. Like the outdoors. It's it's beautiful, but not a lot going on for someone who's young has a lot of ideas, a lot of energy. So I loved I love the internet. Um, and when I was 19, about to turn 20, I dropped out of school and moved up to New York.
And if you've ever lived in New York, you know it's insanely expensive. And where I was from was insanely affordable, to put it nicely. Right. Like, it's like the opposite of New York, where I can get a whole house, you know, for the cost of, like a bunk bed in New York. And so I remember moving to New York and I was a college dropout.
So there's a lot of impostor syndrome there. A lot of the people I would interact with, especially because I was involved in I was interested in technology. They were all working at, like cool tech companies or like Facebook or whatever. And I just remember thinking like, wow, I can't, uh, I could never do that.
I don't have a degree. You don't want to hire me. There's nothing on my resume. I'm just good with computers. And I remember when I got my first freelance project, everything changed. Like, for the first time, I felt like I was an expert. I felt like someone valued my opinion. Uh, someone recognized my skills, and they're like, whoa, like, you can actually help me.
And that was so validating because being this person with an immense amount of especially young people, right, everyone, when you're young, you don't. The world is like, come on, you're like 19, 20, like you're like, what's going on? But being in New York, like being broke, right? And like really having that imposter syndrome, like, really, really like weighing, weighing on me.
I, you know, having that moment to say, like, hey, I'm the expert, I can help. I have authority here. That was big. I think a lot of people globally are going to enter the workforce in the exact same way. Where they're skilled, they have taste, they have an opinion, they have skills that they can offer, but no one's really giving them a chance.
And all of these platforms that have come before contra have all been very misaligned in terms of incentives. Like, like if you're using a platform that has commission fees, it already like puts us at odds with each other, right? Like the more you pay me, the more the platform earns. And so you're kind of like as a platform trying to, like, make me pay more.
Like, that's kind of weird. And then for me, I'm, like, trying to get you off this platform as fast as possible. So I'm acting sketchy. I'm like, hey, Tommy, please. Like, I don't want to pay this 20%. Like, can we just get off? I need to, like, pay my bills and shit. And so like, that creates this weird kind of divide that kind of takes away the humanity of the relationship.
Right? And so a contra, I think more people are going to be like me or they're young, they're skilled, they're going to need to enter the workforce. They're going to need to get experience, and they need to come into an ecosystem that actually has a lot of incentives with the outcome that they're trying to achieve.
They're trying to get better. They're trying to prove themselves. They're trying to get their footing. And in a lot of ways, I'm building contra for the younger version of me. And I see these people all the time. I'll like, meet up with our with our user base. And like contrast tends to skew pretty young.
I remember I saw this one tweet, uh, from one of our users named Luca. He was like, hey, I just got my $50,000 earnings badge on contra. Hopefully I'll hit 100 K before I turned 21. And I'm like, Holy shit, that's amazing. It's working right? And so Luca can now find his way in the world in a way that I wish I could have when I was his age.
I think being creative myself, uh, had lived through this, uh, and seeing where the world is going. I feel like that's enough for me to realize, like, hey, like I have deep empathy with the users that we're serving, and I see a future where there could be an ecosystem that has align incentives, where Tommy can hire Ben, and there's no incentive for them to take it off platform.
I don't have to act sketchy like you don't have to feel like the platform's trying to make you pay more. I don't feel like I have to, you know, take you over to Twitter or, you know, LinkedIn or email or whatever or slack, right? We can just work together. That's really what it is like. I'm building contour for the next generation of us, right?
And all of our team feels the same way. We've all had very similar experiences kind of getting into the workforce. And so
00:12:29.220 — 00:12:33.500 · Speaker 2
I don't know if that's a mission, but it's more like, hey, like there's probably a better way to do this.
00:12:33.540 — 00:13:42.940 · Speaker 1
Dude, I, uh, you took me back to when I first started in the field, and I think, um, I think it was Elance. I left the military and I was just sprinting. I had. You know, I had already had four children at that point, and I was sprinting to upskill myself and be valuable enough to charge rates. I didn't know how to sell, and it was Elance, and I was like, just picking at the lowest quality jobs I could get for $500 for like a WordPress website.
And it was it was like, I have to take them off platform immediately, and it just felt very cold and calculated. The thing that I noticed that you guys are doing now, too, is you're really leaning into not just having this like marketplace, um, system, but it's it's like you really lean into the community part of it.
I know that you guys are rolling out like the, um, there's like an entire kind of social network kind of baked in that you're building out of it. And I'm curious to hear from you. We'll get into that part. You started on the internet young like I did. We built computers, and I have fond memories of the little like corners of the internet communities that I used to participate in.
And what were some of those for you?
00:13:43.100 — 00:14:35.220 · Speaker 2
God, there was like Newegg. There was all these other like sites where you could, like, nerd out about like graphics cards or motherboards, and there's tons of forums that kind of supported those. There's a couple I can't mention, uh, but, you know, as like, uh, you know, as, like an adolescent and as a kid, you know, with nothing to do.
I'm sure you can imagine some of those, uh, I loved torrent sites where I could basically crack the latest version or download the latest keygen for whatever software I wanted to use. I loved Themeforest. Funny enough, I thought Themeforest was amazing. Like, now it's like Envato. I guess it's the same thing.
But to get get started with like a WordPress template or a bootstrap template or whatever, like you could buy code, you could buy video graphics, you could buy like After Effects templates. I thought that was the coolest thing. A lot of, uh, a lot of talk. Funny enough, I'm sure a lot of people got their their start that way too.
00:14:35.500 — 00:15:32.450 · Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. No, I certainly did. The community thing has always been so interesting to me, especially now because social media has made things feel almost overly sanitized. Now we have like content that just everything is just playing to the algorithm and it's so it's so hard to find communities.
The other thing that sucks too, is now that it seems like we've never had more communities spinning up for, you know, individual creators and companies, but everything seems so it has to be a marketing funnel. It's fabricated, like it doesn't seem authentic, like those like the a forum on like Tom's Hardware way back in the day, or even like the forms on those torrent websites.
There was real relationship building happening, and it seems like that's hard to come by these days, but it shouldn't be because we're right in front of each other. How are you guys thinking of like, fostering that kind of thing on contra?
00:15:32.610 — 00:17:17.489 · Speaker 2
Yeah, it's really interesting to see kind of some of our beta users already develop friendships. Meet up in real life. Start podcasts together. Start creating content together. Teaching each other like framer tricks. Teaching each other like content tricks. Contours. Going feet first for a very specific reason.
If you think about, uh, marketplaces and you think about, like, eBay, right? You have product A versus product B, it might be the same thing. You look at the ratings of the seller. You look at the sales of the seller. You look at the reviews and then you're like, okay. It basically commoditized that item.
And there's kind of this like marketplace commodity problem that happens across all marketplaces. And this is this also includes contra, right. So if you just put people like, wow, this really polished design versus this really polished design, but this one's cheaper and this one's more expensive.
But this person has more earnings and this person has more ratings. It starts to feel commoditized right. And you kind of run into this problem where like everyone is kind of pitted against each other, and then people are then incentivized to get more reviews or lower their prices or whatever. And we try our best to like, avoid that as much as possible within like our original marketplace.
But now that we have this marketplace working, like a lot of people are earning money, I think we're at like $120 million run rate now. Like people are finally earning real money. The marketplace commodity problem starts appearing right now. It's just like, okay, if you've been on contra for a long time, you get all the leads and if you're brand new, you have to like kind of pit yourself against someone else and compete on price or whatever.
The reason why we're going feed first, because the best people now
00:17:18.490 — 00:19:38.330 · Speaker 2
are hired, obviously for their skills and they're hired for trust, but they're also hired for their thoughts and the context around who they are as a creator or a creative and whatever skill they have. And you see this a lot on Twitter, right? And so you'll see people posting the latest work and their thoughts around it, or you'll see someone post a tutorial like I love the stuff that Brett from design Joy does.
He's just like pumping out these tutorials with like, cutting edge tools, and I'm sure that just drives him tons of leads. Not obviously. He has the works great, right? But there's a lot of great work. I think it's more around him sharing his thoughts and giving context on his thoughts around that work.
And so we want to give that same ability, that same method of discovery to people on contour as well. So that way if you're brand new, but your work is really great and your thoughts are unique and you have clarity of thought and you can communicate well, you could also attract work and find clients and get leads and things like that.
And so it's it's one of our ways of combating the marketplace commodity problem, but also giving people a way to have 1 to 1 connections. Because right now, like if you're an independent, on the contrary, you put up your profile, you might see someone else. We haven't supported DMs. We haven't really supported a way for, you know, you to follow someone.
All the stuff has is now slowly being released, but like, it kind of felt kind of dry and like one dimensional. And so going feed first is our way of trying to solve that commodity problem, while giving people more of a voice and a place where they can actually build a brand. But it's hard to foster authentic community, right?
And especially when you're using your real name a lot of times, like some of the most unhinged, but also some of the most like real takes are in these anonymized communities like Reddit. Like, you don't know who these people are, but you'll get like, very human posts and very human content that you can't really have.
You can't be that vulnerable, right? To like millions of people. Sometimes you can and sometimes it works really well. Sometimes it backfires and it's like a lot of pressure, right? So we still haven't cracked that, but we're starting to see it happen organically on contra. And we're going to continue to work on ways to, I don't know, like push this idea of like 1 to 1 connection or one to many connection, like building a brand, building a community.
But it's hard. So I don't know, maybe like, ask us in six months and see, like if we're out of the pain cave yet, you know.
00:19:38.370 — 00:21:14.680 · Speaker 1
So discoverability is is really tough and and I, I found an interesting thing start to happen on our media side where I just started finding really talented designers who'd have like 500 followers on X or, you know, they just would they wouldn't really have a social presence because they're they're too busy just cranking out cracked work, you know, and and so I said, you know, what?
If I just talk about these people, like, show their work for them. And I just made a couple videos one day and, and those videos, you know, the people would message me and say, hey, thank you so much. I appreciate you putting my work out there. The the people viewing the videos would say, I'm so stoked that you, you know, put us on game.
That's awesome. Um, and I said, oh, that's kind of a cool thing to be almost this independent discovery engine. That's right. UX tools is a newsletter I write for almost 100,000 thousand readers. I dig into the latest design tools and how some of the best people and teams are creating software. Check it out at UX tools, and if you like following stories like mine or hearing from people like Ben, please subscribe to the designer Tom YouTube channel where I drop new episodes of this podcast and videos like it every week.
Your support right now is huge because it seems like we had dribble, we have Behance, we have like a couple of these things that end up turning into almost like a popularity contest. How do you think about this discovery engine today? Like what? What are some of the problems that why do you think some of those problems exist?
And what do you think the solution is to that?
00:21:15.440 — 00:22:03.120 · Speaker 2
Sometimes it's the motor discovery. For example with Dribble and Behance, it is just a grid of work that you can scroll through. And that's super, super helpful for inspiration. And it's really it's a really, really great UX pattern For certain things, like if you're trying to find a very specific like login page style or a very specific like mobile interaction, you can kind of scroll through grids.
That doesn't necessarily facilitate serendipity. It doesn't really facilitate discovery with context. It's still hard. Like, I don't know if there's the perfect method for discovering creative work. One of the tools that I like that's coming hot onto the scene is this tool called cosmos. Have you have you heard of this one?
00:22:03.120 — 00:22:04.240 · Speaker 1
I have. Yeah.
00:22:04.560 — 00:23:29.080 · Speaker 2
Yeah. So it's like this kind of like new age, like Pinterest for creatives, like really nice UX, but same thing. It's like the kind of Pinterest model where there's just so much, right? There's so much. And then you really are incentivized as a creator to create the most eye catching kind of graphic or thumbnail that might not actually work in production.
So I think what you're doing by like really going deep, I think depth might be the answer here, but how do you get depth with a feed? Or how do you get depth with like a grid view? Right. So maybe long form media is the answer, but like not everyone has access to that. You're doing people a huge favor by going deep on their work and who they are.
Like that's rare. That's not the norm. So I don't think we've cracked it yet. Um, but there's probably some element of depth. There's probably some element of mode of discovery, like how does this actually work? And then how do you not create an echo chamber, right. With these like algorithms, how do you not just give someone more of what they like?
How do they even discover something new and develop new taste? Right. We're even seeing this with Spotify. Like they have, like, there's like, these magic, uh, recommenders. Right? Like, if you have a playlist, you can, like, turn on the AI, uh, playlist creator, and it'll just find you music that's complementary to the stuff you already like.
But does that create an echo chamber? Are you actually going to be able to discover something new? I don't know, but that's that's the general trend of the internet today. And so I don't know what the answer is, but it's a hard problem if someone solves it.
00:23:30.080 — 00:23:33.400 · Speaker 1
They'll get out of the pain cave. Yeah, well.
00:23:33.400 — 00:23:34.480 · Speaker 2
You know what's.
00:23:34.480 — 00:24:45.800 · Speaker 1
Crazy, too? That you guys do. And this is really cool. And it aligns a lot with back. You know, in my startup years ago, there was a big debate internally. And it was, you know, do we focus on allowing our tool to integrate with competitors, for example, or other tools and like how can we use that, not just as a feature that gives our users more access to things, but how do we use that as a way to, um, just provide a more robust offering?
And so what you guys are doing is you'll have like the framer badge. You do like almost cross product led growth for like framer. I think you guys are working with some other companies too. And it's, you know, old marketplaces. I might filter a contractor by people who know like HTML and CSS or maybe like framer.
Um, I feel like you guys do put some depth into that. It's more than just oh they know framer. It's like here are their accomplishments with framer. Here are like how much they've earned here. Here's like really other validating characteristics on why you might want to hire this particular person for that framer job.
I find that really interesting. And it seems like you guys are doing more and more of that.
00:24:46.120 — 00:24:51.400 · Speaker 2
Yeah, that was actually a yawns idea from framer. So he
00:24:52.520 — 00:25:32.920 · Speaker 2
approached us over a Twitter DM and was like, hey, you know, we are growing really fast. We need people to help us build sites for some of our biggest customers. We don't have a way to basically distinguish someone for being for being good or not. And, you know, tons of people have like I'm sure you've seen like the Web Flow Partners ecosystem.
And I think Shopify has a massive one. I know, like HubSpot and Salesforce started this like basically having like a services arm to their tool. But like framer is not corporate. They're so cool, right? It's like this like whole vibe in itself. And so,
00:25:34.040 — 00:26:17.800 · Speaker 2
you know, they didn't want to spin up one of these like kind of like cheesy like services, like kind of marketplaces on just any site, you know, like we can't really work with Upwork because it's cringe. We can't work with fiber because it's like got a the brand is maybe like, that's not what we aspire to be like.
Contra seems to be like, you know, tons of people are talking about contra. Maybe we can do this with you guys. And so we prototyped it in like two weeks and launched it and it just like totally changed our business. And so now I think we have like 35 different partners. Um, people basically can qualify creators using their tool, which is really empowering for the creator, because now you have like this because like when you're looking for skills today,
00:26:19.080 — 00:29:43.910 · Speaker 2
you're typically not saying, like, I want a website designer. You're like, I want a framer designer, or I want a web flow developer or whatever it is, right? Like it's kind of changed a bit because now people are recognizing tools more as kind of like these creative ecosystems that can give you very specific outputs.
Like, I'm sure you've seen jitter or spline or rive, right. And like there's like these new kind of, um, AI code editors like Bolt and Lovable and Replit and there's all these, like, you now know, there's like specific vibes in these tool ecosystems. You're like, I want someone to do that. I think that's how things are.
That's how that's how stuff's changing. That's how the world is changing in that direction. But it's really important for us to get that right because that's what independents want. Today I was talking to one of our most successful users, and he's like 25, and he is basically saying that he learned skills by looking at contrast, seeing who's actually earning with which tools and then learning that tool and becoming proficient.
But but now, like the tools are so good. Like, if you're creative and you have good ideas, like you can learn a tool and create crazy things like, I wish I was coming up in this in this ecosystem. It's so it's like the stuff you could do today is nuts. And now Midjourney just launched video. It's like, what is this?
Right? Like this is crazy. So, you know, we want to continue to integrate where people are and integrate with the tools that are actually shaping the future cultures. You know, we kind of just want to get out of the way and let people do the work. And so we're going to do even deeper integration. So we're launching this API now where we embed contour profiles directly on like partner sites.
So for example we're working with this one company called instant. They're like this new kind of like Figma interface for the Shopify ecosystem. Like their entire kind of like partner ecosystem is going to be powered by contra, but it's not going to be on contra. It's going to be on instant. So experts.
Right. And then also we're going to allow contra Contour profile data to exist on your framework portfolio or your web flow portfolio, or your custom built site. Like any data that you've built on contra, any credential, any social proof you have on contra should be able to exist anywhere. And so we really believe in like, open networks.
Uh, my co-founder Gaius is like a big open source contributor. And he really, like, kind of beat this idea into my head. It's like, yeah, like the Open Network will win in the future because you've seen all these closed networks like LinkedIn is a perfect example. Like you have to authenticate, you have to get inside, you know, like and then the same thing with like these GMV take rate marketplaces, like you have to keep the transaction on their platform.
They gatekeeper information like you can't find someone's GitHub, you can't find their email, you can't find their portfolio site. We think the opposite. We think that the open approach is probably the winning approach because it's so easy. So say Tommy is going to hire Ben to do some work. You can just pay me via Usdc or PayPal or whatever.
Transfer wise, it doesn't matter. We can DM on Twitter, LinkedIn, email, slack. It doesn't matter, right? There is no there's no more gates, right? And so we imagine a world where you can hit conscious API for any data. We'll have experts embedded on other sites. People can push data into contra. That's I think, the future.
And so that's the kind of stance we've taken. But we'll see.
00:29:44.150 — 00:30:38.110 · Speaker 1
I think it's pretty incredible the way independent creatives today, um, you know, there is the job market concerns specifically with companies, uh, you know, where's creative work going and layoffs that might be happening. And it seems like the, uh, freelance and independent market and even like, agency side is, is seeing a lot of growth.
Uh, maybe sometimes it's like a forcing function. But I've heard from a lot of people, they're like, once you get past that initial hurdle, you suddenly have so much more control. But the issue is like building leverage. Starting out right. Building leverage. With what tools do you become proficient in?
Building leverage around? Um, obviously the client base that you build, but also like how do you get discovered? What do you think? Or like, what does really good leverage look like for an independent creative? Today?
00:30:38.470 — 00:31:12.950 · Speaker 2
I still think the quality of your work shines the brightest, but I think it's becoming easier and easier to produce work that looks good. I think it's tough. It depends on the skill set. It's also tough about contrast that we have multiple, uh, skill sets on contrast. So we have engineers, we have designers, we have visual designers, product designers, mobile designers.
Right. And then you have animators, you have people who work in video, people who work in content marketing across the board. So it's kind of different for everyone. But maybe like going back to,
00:31:14.270 — 00:33:06.860 · Speaker 2
I don't know, let's just say for like your, your average like product designer or visual designer. People obviously want to see great work. But people also want social proof. They want to know, like, hey, has does someone trust you? Uh, have you, like, produced something that's gotten to production?
And if so, like, what does that look like? How does it feel like? And so one of the things that we really try to do on contra is highlighting real work. So we have this concept of a verified project, which means that it's a project that you ran through contra. You can attach an invoice to it, which means like, hey, there's a real client behind this.
And then there's a way for you to actually link the completed work. So this is really powerful for like, product designers or like framer developers or web developers or even marketers or like video editors, right? So you can literally say like, hey, this was the work I did. It was verified, which means I actually got paid for it.
And then here's the live link to this work in production. I think that's probably the easiest way to build trust. But then standing out, getting your first opportunity. I mean, there's so many ways now, like you have like Twitter, you have LinkedIn, you have contra, you have. I think dribble still has a lot of people going to it.
Your hand still has a lot of people going to it. Like you just have to just like make some noise. So like do good work, have some type of social proof, uh, and then just distribute it and see what happens. I think if you do that long enough, you will get hired. Like there's so much work out there and I think there's a lot of FUD being spread around like, oh, AI's taking all of our jobs and we're all going to be irrelevant, but it's just not true.
Like it's just not true. Like there's more demand that there's ever been. It's the best time ever to be a creative. It's just like some people pay attention to the noise. Some people just heads down and just like, make it happen. I don't know.
00:33:07.180 — 00:34:10.500 · Speaker 1
I, I am a big optimist. I, I definitely self-identify and agree with that take AI. The thing that I find interesting now to and this has been something more recently I've had new projects, the UX tools as a survey, and I've brought on a bunch of folks to come and help with that in really key ways. You know, we had some, like Nick Patterson and fans and all these people come in.
And then that was the end of the project, and it was like everyone got to put their name on it. And it was a great big thing because we did that. And now Michael and I are working on like a yearbook project to really a love letter to the design industry. And that's going to be very project based, and we're going to get all these great people, and then that's going to be the end of that thing.
And and I bring that up because you've talked about the project based identity and so much so that you, you guys created, I think like the verified project badge and some of these things on platform. Um, can you tell me a little bit about what makes kind of this project profile that I have accidentally found myself stumbling into more powerful than kind of like a resume?
00:34:11.060 — 00:37:51.220 · Speaker 2
You were building a new media company, Right. And so you're essentially like, what comes after Hollywood or what comes after like these big production like mainstream production studios, right? Like the means of production are now available to all. And the people with the best ideas can win. So you have all of these amazing ideas and you're able to pull in these amazing collaborators.
That's like the Hollywood model, right? Like, Fonz is like the star of the product design community, right? Michael is like the the star of like another area of like the product design community. You get these like big names together and you bring I guess you bring together a team for a very specific outcome, right?
Whether it's the UX tool survey or this yearbook project that doesn't really make sense, like full time doesn't make sense for that, right? Like you all have so many different things going on, but you're all so talented, it makes sense to collaborate. But maybe not forever on everything, but you'll probably work together again.
There's probably going to be a project next year, or maybe in a couple of quarters or whatever that you're going to work together again. Like that's that was the OG Hollywood model where like you get a set of like, production staff and the camera crew and the director and the actors, and you all work on these different projects for these different periods of time, and then you move on.
But you always work together again, and you build trust that way. That's coming to the creative industry. And it's I think it's going to come to everyone. I think that's the future. And so what people care about for that project, they care about the outcome that you contributed to that project. Right. So if someone design your UX tool survey, like did they do a good job, how did they do it?
Like what was your feedback? They want to know what you thought about working with that person. Right. And so in order for that project to be valuable to whoever designed the UX tool survey this year, they need the work to be great. They need to basically show what they did. They need a live link to production, and then they need Tommy.
They need you to say like, hey, this person was easy to work with. That's worth its weight in gold, right? And so we just made that really easy on contra. People have always been doing this through portfolio sites, but the problem with portfolio sites is everyone has their own fancy design take and their own UX pattern they want to adopt, which is great.
But oftentimes like there's always like one missing component, whether it's just like the review or the outcome or the link to the live work, some people actually know. I take that back like some people really nail their portfolio sites. For the most part, it's pretty challenging for people. And so a project based identity, it's like resume with granularity, and that's what's going to be required for the future, for you to stand out, to get opportunities like resumes are pretty much trash.
I mean, you can now like basically fake LinkedIn accounts. We see these pranks happen all the time, right? Like it's not it's not a real place anymore. We tried to make a system that makes it advantageous to produce real work and showcase real work. And so that's our philosophy on it, contra. But I think you're already you've been living this for a long time.
I think a lot of the best designers. The best creatives have been living this for a very long time because they're trendsetters. But typically. But the best people are doing today. Everyone is going to be doing tomorrow. And so we're seeing the rest of the world kind of catch up. And so we're just trying to put structure to it, make it easier for someone to say like, hey, I did this.
I had a great outcome. I actually earned money doing this. So this is like verified. I'm not just making this up because you've also seen that, right? You've seen people take credit for things that they might not have done. It's tough right? So you know, the way that you're operating today, building this new like media company is the same way that I think everyone's going to operate in the future.
Like you're just ahead of the curve and culture is just trying to keep up with what all the best creatives have always been doing.
00:37:51.260 — 00:37:54.219 · Speaker 1
You know, there's I think there's a lot of things changing in
00:37:55.220 — 00:38:36.170 · Speaker 1
I maybe four years removed from, uh, in-house, like corporate design, as I would call it. Right. And there was, you know, some conversation happening online the other day about hiring practices. And so how does kind of contra think about this? There are people saying, hey, I can tell in like six seconds if this creative producer is going to be the right fit for us.
And, you know, it was a pretty hot take. A lot of people took issue with it and other people said, including rid, he said, you know, I'm talking to these incredibly talented teams and I'm hearing them say the same thing. What is contra saying in that vein? Or how do you think about supporting an ecosystem like that?
00:38:36.330 — 00:40:38.770 · Speaker 2
I think the more popular thing that we're seeing now is you'll have like these kind of small, very opinionated teams that are supported by networks of specialists. And so we see a lot of design teams operate this way on contra, where, you know, they'll be like they'll be fully staffed with product designers, creative directors, whatever, but they'll tap in people for very specific things like animation or very specific type of graphic design or a very specific type of design output.
Say it's like an ad or something like that. I think that's probably going to be the future of teams where you have maybe like kind of a core brain, like maybe like one or 2 or 3, like really creative generalists and entire networks of people who kind of support you. That's how contra works, actually. And so that's the only kind of method that I know.
I've never worked in a big company. I've never been a part of the corporate world. I've always been in startups. I'm sure like fortune 500 companies operate very differently than what I'm describing. But we also have fortune 500 companies that operate exactly how I'm describing. And they do it on contra as we see it.
Right? And so I think that the future looks a lot more like what you are doing where you have this like creative tastemaker mind and you pull in people to help execute on that vision, and you pull in different people for different things, for different projects. Vibes are real, you know that. Like, I have to agree that like, vibes are real.
Like you get the vibe of some someone's work and you're like, are you either like or you don't? Same thing, like when you listen to music or you see a painting or you taste food and everyone has the same opinion though, right? So I think it's it's just tough. And it all depends on the culture of the organization you're going into.
Contra, we operate from this idea. We have like two product designers and one brand designer who like, runs all creative. And then we have a huge network of people that we tap into for various things, everything from like animation to engineering to framer to whatever it is. And so I think that's probably how more teams are going to work in the future.
00:40:39.170 — 00:40:58.410 · Speaker 1
Do you see a world where there's kind of collabs where, you know, a group of independent contractors regularly work together on projects, but they're not, you know, a dedicated agency? And if so, do you do you see contract building, some sort of framework to support things like that?
00:40:58.770 — 00:41:04.130 · Speaker 2
Yeah, I think I think we already see that, um, like these kind of like studios.
00:41:05.330 — 00:42:35.330 · Speaker 2
And I kind of like these newer agencies. They're like hyper online. They might have projects as an agency or they might do projects individually. We also see that on contra. I think it's already happening. Uh, and you'll I mean, I think like I said, I think what you're doing is the perfect example. You're probably going to work with funds again, right on another project.
Who knows what it's going to be like. I said, it's just the Hollywood model. I think it's going mainstream. Everyone's going to work this way. Um, yeah, we're already seeing it. We're already seeing it on contra. Like, do we want to build or do we want to productize it? Maybe a lot of people have asked for that.
But then I think about it like, do you really want that? Like, what does that look like? Is that even a sexy product? Or is it just like bill splitting or something that's like really just mundane and like boring? Is it just like a better spreadsheet? I don't know, but we facilitate like payments. We allow you to both be a creative and get hired, but also hire other people.
And so we see that a lot. But I don't know if we're going to like build allow people to build teams or studios. A lot of people have asked for it. It probably makes sense, but we see a lot of agencies run their creative networks on contrast. So like their networks of animators or copywriters or video editors or whatever, they'll have their lists and they'll have their people that they tap in or like, who their creative creative directors tap into or their project managers tap into.
And so we see that quite a bit. And then we'll see those people do individual projects too. So it's getting like full time versus freelance. It's all getting so blurry man. It really is.
00:42:35.570 — 00:43:50.050 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And and it's and it's, you know, I, I raced to get out of freelance when I first started my career because at the time it was like, oh, you know, in-house is where all the sexy stuff is happening and it's like, get out of freelance. And that was kind of my, my thinking. And then I spent a bunch of time in-house product design.
And now that I think today and I look at all the people, I have a new found love for The Independent, because I think there's more exciting things and opportunities you can take advantage of, but also the communities that that have spun up to support one another. I don't know how tapped into these communities you've been, but I only recently discovered on certain communities, on discord and on slack, where some incredibly talented folks, they they deal change together.
They're like, hey, I can't take this contract. I need someone here. And it's like, you, you kind of know that, you know, I know that if I go to, for example, Devin Fountain, and if he can't do a project for me, I know that deal's going to get passed in the hands of a good network, and I'm going to find someone who I probably don't know, but because it came from him, that's immediately someone that I'm going to trust.
Have you seen these communities and how do you think about that inside of contra?
00:43:50.210 — 00:44:50.960 · Speaker 2
I'm a huge fan of Devon, by the way. Uh, he's so talented. I follow him on X, and I've met him in real life, actually, like a couple times now. Um, but that's how contra started. We had a slack community for independent creatives. Um, he had like 10,000 people in there at peak. And then we realized like, okay, like, this is like really hard to support.
Slack might not be the right medium. I think discord is a better product for these, like, communities. Um, and then ultimately we wanted to bring it to contra, but we see that happening on contra two. Or people will say like, hey, like my client needs this skill, who's out there? Who can I? And in a lot of ways, that's what our kind of feed first product will support.
The more time I spend, like building contra, you know, more time of the pain cave. Like we started with, like, I just, I feel like I can only use so many things. And I think X and YouTube are my two most used products. So, like,
00:44:52.000 — 00:45:40.320 · Speaker 2
I know there's not really a crazy community on YouTube, but the kind of is, right? There's a community in the comments, there's a community with the creators. And so whether it's like watching tutorial or being in there, but I should spend more time on discord. I kind of got into discord during like the initial kind of crypto wave, and then I was like, wait a second, I like this, I get it, you know?
But maybe not for me. And when I was a gamer back in the day, like it was like steam and all the kind of OG versions of what discord ultimately became. And so it happens, right? You trust Devin? Like, if he says gives you an opportunity or if he passes an opportunity to the community, people listen. And I know there's a lot of I think fans has one two right.
Ten designers. Mhm. Um, there's another one. What am I thinking of like Flux Academy I don't know if you've. What's his name.
00:45:40.360 — 00:45:41.560 · Speaker 1
Ren. Yeah.
00:45:41.960 — 00:46:02.880 · Speaker 2
Rand. Yeah yeah yeah I ran he's that seems to be like another one. And then I think there was another one. Um, she was like a big web flow personality. Her name was Grace. I see her on Twitter a lot. I think she had, uh, community as well. Uh, but I know all of our team is. especially Aaron, who you've met on our team.
She's a lot of these and she kind of gives me the she's like, okay, I saw this and I saw that.
00:46:02.920 — 00:47:01.760 · Speaker 1
It's it's it's fun. And another thing I'm seeing is like a lot of community events and, and you know, it's there's this question about branding. And I get asked this all the time because my whole content creation journey started like, well, let me figure out how to brand myself. And I'm going to talk about one thing.
And, you know, for me, it was it was, you know, maybe I wasn't trying to get clients, but like the, the, the kind of the methods were very similar. And so a lot of people on Twitter will talk about like, oh, you got to brand yourself to get clients this way. Yeah. I feel like maybe some of those rules and not all.
I think a lot of it's pretty traditional and that will stick around. But I do think there are some rules that may be changing about how maybe a brand new designer might think about getting themselves easier to find on the internet or on places like contra. How what would you say to somebody who's in their first or second year, like maybe out of school or they've got enough projects under their belt.
They're ready to try to make money from this. How would you tell them to get found?
00:47:01.800 — 00:47:04.000 · Speaker 2
Have you met Alison? She's our VP of product.
00:47:04.040 — 00:47:04.320 · Speaker 1
I don't.
00:47:04.320 — 00:49:29.879 · Speaker 2
Believe so. She's like the kind of product mastermind behind a lot of the stuff that we do. She was talking to a recent. I think it was like a Parsons graduate, and I think she just met this person on the train, and she had just graduated. And Alison's like, oh, nice. Like, so, like, what are you doing? And you know, what tools do you use?
And she was like, oh, Adobe. And it's like, okay, so like what do you want to work on? And she's like, oh, I don't know or whatever. And those kind of this like very like I don't want to say aloof but like, like not a lot of opinions, not a lot of like, like relevant skills and like, I think that's like a very dangerous place to be in as a young person.
I think you have to be infinitely curious. Go find the tools that people are earning money with, learn them, produce really cool stuff with them, maybe even like find someone notable and do a free project. I know people like say that that's like Whatever. But like I see there's just one contra user who operates his agency.
I actually just met him in San Francisco. His name is Mark. You probably have seen him on Twitter, but he's like 19 from Kazakhstan. He's pulling in like 50 K a month. Um, I'm not even joking. This is all through X, though. He's just like, has this like, formula where he's he's like, he's 19 years old. He got his visa to the US because of stripe sessions.
So he basically stripe wrote him recommendations letter. Uh and then he was able to get his visa. And so like now he's in the US. When you meet someone who's 19, you're probably like, I don't know, can you actually do good work? He basically made a free, like kind of jitter animation for the bolt hackathon.
And then the bolt team reached out to him saying, like, whoa, he just posted it on Twitter. He just posted on X. He's like, killer work using this cool new tool for free for this company. The company reaches out to him, pays him for it, uses it, and now he has all these people hitting him up in the DMs and his DMs to basically create something similar.
So he was infinitely curious. He saw that like, oh wow, Bolt's this, like, fast growing company. I'm going to maybe ride that wave. Jeter amazing tool. So he learned how to use Jeter. He's already a good designer, right? He made the animation for free posted out there. It was sick, got noticed, and now he has tons of leads.
There's people who are just coasting and they want to just like, do the minimum amount of work and they want to be minimally curious about like what's happening out there. Like there's not a lot of hope, right? You might get like a
00:49:30.880 — 00:50:29.270 · Speaker 2
low paying, like, I don't know, like in-house like agency job maybe. Or you could be like Mark, who just is like, infinitely curious is hustling and thinking outside the box. Right. And I, I heard that and I was like, wow, that's so brilliant, right? Like more young people should just do that. Just like, find a trend, find a tool, get good enough to where, like, you can produce things that people would use.
Maybe do it for free. Put it out there and see what happens. And then, like, I guess he's 19. He's making 50 K a month. Like it's crazy. I'm like, man. Like, what is going on? Like where where was like, where was this? Whenever I was like struggling, making like $2,000 a month, trying to, like, survive in New York.
Right? That's what that's what I would, I would, I would do something like that. And you can host that on a contract, right? You can put that on contract. You can post it on a contract. You can create a profile. You can post that to Twitter. You can monetize for free on contract. Write all this. It's just it's never been easier.
So stay infinitely curious. Put yourself out there. I mean what could go wrong?
00:50:29.670 — 00:50:49.670 · Speaker 1
I love that. And you know, as we kind of wrap this conversation, you're not charging. You're not charging in the typical ways. You know, some people are like, how is contra making money? Then I in my startup years ago, I did not want to take 1% from the viewers donating to Twitch streamers. He chose not to.
Yeah, it put us in a really painful spot. That was the pain cave.
00:50:49.790 — 00:50:50.270 · Speaker 2
Yep.
00:50:50.590 — 00:50:55.070 · Speaker 1
Going back to that analogy, as we kind of wrap up here. Where are you in the pain cave right now?
00:50:55.230 — 00:52:12.390 · Speaker 2
It's it's crazy because when we were commission free and we had no way of monetizing actually hurt our credibility. People were like, okay, this company's not going to survive. Like, why am I going to put any time into this? Like, you're not charging anything. It's free. Like what's going to happen? But now we have Culture Pro.
We have partner network subscriptions. We have an ad network. You know, we have a contract fees for clients. We have subscriptions for companies that are higher rate. And we have something actually I'm going to leak it to you for your for your Friday leaks. But I'm going to tell it to you after this. But like we have something completely new now that's going to be like another utility for users.
But we try to monetize with value ads versus being a pure middleman versus being value extracting. We try to only monetize via value added features or products or whatever it is. And so you'll probably see a discount for framer on contract. You'll probably see a discount for design school, or you might see a discount for like your favorite animation tool and like take advantage of it.
But like that's how we monetize it. So as we scale, we found ways to actually monetize via value add. And so it was hard and like a lot of yeah, there's a lot of credibility loss in the early days. Like people just like did not believe like this is way too good to be true.
00:52:13.470 — 00:52:27.590 · Speaker 2
Why should I believe this? And it's like I said, there's still a lot of people like that. Uh, but it's changing. And so we're almost out of the pain cave. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still we're still there. So if you use contra, bear with us. We're making it better every day.
00:52:27.790 — 00:52:44.190 · Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. That is awesome. Big bets are terrifying. Ben is betting on community and the new way of creative work. I'm betting on media and trying to make creative technology fun and approachable again. Follow me as I learn how to do it from some of the best in the business. See you next time!