1,000 amazing artists and counting!
Feb 23, 2023
On August 26th, 2022, we finally convinced an artist friend of ours to create a profile on Rolo. He was the first.
A few days later, Taylor Yontz joined and eventually became the first artist we featured in our weekly Artist Spotlight newsletter. From there we were off to the races!
This week, some 180 days later, we accepted our 1000th artist! (Technically as of posting this, we're up to 1028, but who's counting 😉)
When we first started dreaming about Rolo our hypothesis was that there was a need and an appetite for something like this both from the artists and the clients in our space. We had little data to go on though and simply decided to dive into the deep end and pursue this curiosity to see where it led us. Neither of us was a developer or had any idea of what we were doing for that matter, but what did we really have to lose?
The past six months have been a whirlwind. We’re both busy, so we squeezed in meetings before morning runs and got deep work in after the kids went to sleep. There have been more Loom videos than we can count as we’ve volleyed tasks back and forth.
So far we’ve been getting some amazing feedback and have some wonderful studios beta-testing and using Rolo on a daily basis, kicking the tires, and helping us make the platform better.
With each day, as Rolo continued to solidify, our original hypothesis only seemed to strengthen. Even though it is just a number and Rolo has a long way to go, having 1,000 people believe in something you are making means a lot.
One of our favorite parts of this experience has been to see how truly large our community is (hint: it’s global!). Everyone knows lots of great artists live in New York, Los Angeles, and London. But what about Kuala Lumpur, Santiago, and İstanbul? It’s all too easy to have the myopic view that good work only comes from the major markets and from under the umbrella of big companies. Rolo has served as a refreshing reminder that this isn’t the case and we’ve had a front-row seat to view some amazing work from all around the world. On Rolo, right now, you can find amazing artists on nearly every continent and in just about every timezone.
That is an increasingly powerful proposition as we have all had to widen the lens through which we view this industry and embrace a hybrid and distributed work model.
This brings us to where we’re at now, about halfway through our beta phase. For Rolo to be successful, it’s not just about finding artists. We need the clients, too. It’s almost time for us to open up the platform to companies, and show them what we’ve been building for the past 6 months.
So far we’ve been getting some amazing feedback and have some wonderful studios beta-testing and using Rolo on a daily basis, kicking the tires, and helping us make the platform better. Many of the changes you’ve seen rolled out have been a result of their generous time and feedback.
In the next month, we’ll finish building v1 of Rolo and unleash it upon the world. Rolo allows companies to discover, organize, and contact artists in a way that, in all seriousness, has never been possible. The 1,000 (and counting) artists on the site took a chance on us, and we’re getting ready to make sure we repay that favor by getting the platform in front of as many people as we can. It won’t be easy, and it’ll take time… but we’re excited for what is to come.
✌️
