Justin Gignac: Building the world’s most obsessively curated community of creatives
Justin Gignac is the founder of Working Not Working, a marketplace that connects companies with the universe’s most creative creatives.
The co—matter podcast 008 | December 17, 2017
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Founded in 2012 by Justin and his friend Adam Tompkins in New York City, the platform now includes over 10.000 members that work together with over 2000 of the world's best companies such as Apple, The New York Times, Airbnb and Wieden+Kennedy.
In our interview, Justin shares what it takes to build a community like Working Not Working; and his plans to grow it while staying true to its mission.
Lessons learned from Justin:
- On ideas:"If you put something on the internet and your mom doesn't share it, it probably won't get a lot of traction" - 12:30
- On getting started: "We intentionally kept it small. We started with 300 of the best freelancers we knew in NYC, LA and SF. And they nominated their friends and it grew from there. This allowed us to build trust amongst our client and our talents, because they knew that only the best were on our platform." - 16:00
- On meetups & events: “When we decided to go freelance we didn’t realize the isolation we were signing up for. Sometimes I was working from home for 14 hours straight and forgot to put music on. So to be able to get people together and support them beyond just getting them work is really important to us.” - 26:20
- On inspiration: "I think I’m always drawn to sincerity. The human part of it. To really connect with people and to give a shit. I’m drawn to people who give a shit. And who are trying to do right by people as opposed to doing right by their wallets and their shareholders." - 38:00
- His advice: "Start with the people you know. The reason why we’ve found success is because we solved our own problem. And then we solved the problem of our friends, their friends and our community. Unless you solve a problem, you’re doomed." - 41:00
You'll find out more from Justin Gignac in Episode #8 of The Community Podcast.
Visit Working not Working and say hi to @justingignac on Twitter.
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