Portrait of the Artist as a Young Startup
Our first dispatch from Portrait, Inc., and three trends from 100+ creative conversations
Hello friends!
Kasia and Jean Ellen here.
Maybe we spoke recently. Maybe we talked shop months ago. Either way, we’re grateful for your support thus far. HELLO! How are you?!
This is our first dispatch from Portrait, the startup we’re building to serve you, our favorite creative people. Beta coming this fall!
We’ll use this occasional letter to share behind-the-scenes stories and trends as well as new tools ready for your test drive.
As members of our braintrust, we hope you’ll join us on the journey.
How We Got Here
Portrait began with 100 conversations with you.
We asked you: How’s work? What’s hard? What systems never worked?
Thank you for your time and honest answers. Many of you said it felt like therapy. We promised we’d return and share what we learned.
Three Insights From 100+ Conversations
1) Your most valuable networking is also the most challenging.
It’s critical to reach the “next layer out” from your core network — because finding the right person is key, whether you are building a project team, hiring talent, charming financiers, or disarming gatekeepers. Ideally, you’d like access to all the trusted, vetted people that your people know.
But tapping into (and expanding) your network is a constant challenge – especially since the pandemic changed many live events, conferences, and festivals. Right now you rely on one-off word-of-mouth connections, but you realize this is limited and limiting – not to mention, time consuming.
Gig marketplaces offer a deluge of talent and roles, but you don’t have time to sift through an ocean of unvetted people or opportunities.
2) The last thing you want is another social network (and the baggage that phrase entails).
… But you do want a better way to stay on top of your network (one of you called it “creative radar”).
Instagram ain’t what it used to be – You’re drowning in reels from randos. Long before the recent public backlash, you told us: the platform has become much harder to use professionally.
LinkedIn is too corporate for you. It’s designed for resumes, not portfolios… and culturally, it’s not a good fit.
3) Your portfolio needs a refresh… but it’s a time-consuming chore.
Many of you haven’t updated your site in a long time, if you ever built one.
Many of you would actually like fewer choices: a quicker, easier multimedia showcase – one that requires minimal effort to update.
TL;DR: You want tools to build your empire and activate your network…
… in the right way, at the right time.
So: What Are We Doing With All Of This?
We’re creating real, live portfolio websites to test our ideas.
Need a portfolio refresh? We will build your portfolio for you.Seriously. Email us!
We’re launching our beta this fall! We’ll invite a select group of talented people – that’s you – to play with it first.
In the spirit of building for you, we’ll close out with one question…
This is the beginning for Portrait. We hope it is the start of an entertaining, thought-provoking conversation with you too. Email us any time with feedback, ideas, one-off thoughts, memes, gripes, and grist for the future. We’re excited to build for you.
With joy and gratitude,
K + JE
Oh man, I was hoping we could vote for more than one topic in the poll! :( haha