How Artfinder Grew Their Marketplace 146% After The Pandemic

Michal Szczesny

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Published: April 17th, 2022

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Michal Szczesny

Founder, Artfinder

Founders

Employees

Artfinder

artfinder.com

from London

started January 2013

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools Michal recommends to grow your business!

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Basecamp

Discover what books Michal recommends to grow your business!

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I’m Michal Szczesny and I’m CEO of Artfinder. I joined the business as CTO in Jan 2013, taking over as CEO in December 2017.

Before that, I spent 15 years in software development, previously leading teams at Tangent Labs where he built multi-channel marketing platforms for clients including The Labour Party.

We’ve seen incredible growth in the past year, with sales growing over 100% from 2019 to 2020.

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What's your backstory and how did you get into entrepreneurship?

I was born in Poland and grew up in a small town in the central region. I received my first computer when I was eight years old, which got me interested in games and even programming. My brother and I used to code in ‘Basic’ together, so by the age of 12, I could touch-type. When the internet became a thing, I became interested in building websites.

I set-up my first business at the age of 16, creating websites for companies and individuals in the region. It was an interesting time because no one knew what the internet would grow into. During university, I worked full-time as a customer service representative selling ceramic tiles. I loved it! It helped me learn what great customer service should look like and what’s important to people when they buy. I stayed and progressed at the same company for a number of years, and built their very first website, as well as coding some of their more complex systems.

Take us through your entrepreneurial journey. How did you go from day 1 to today?

I moved to London in 2006 and landed my first proper job as a programmer at a great agency called Tangent. I met some fantastic people, including coders, designers and business people, some of whom still mentor me today.

Finding things in life that are rewarding, things that feel like progress, when every day at work does not feel like progress, felt particularly important at that time.

I joined Artfinder in January 2013 as CTO when it was going through some major changes to its business model. In a way, our direction was still being defined and it was great to be a part of that process. Since then, I became COO and then took over as CEO in late 2017.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We’ve experienced an incredible period of growth through the Covid pandemic, with sales up 146% from 2019 to 2020. This growth has continued well into 2021, although slowed a little as we’ve seen the world open up again. I’m really proud to say that we’ve used that momentum to grow our incredible team and also to be able to increase our positive impact on our community and the planet.

Our 2021 Annual Impact Report reports on our impact on people and planet this year, but one of our biggest achievements is starting to plant a tree for every artwork sold. That’s 95,627 trees now in the Artfinder forest. We’re also founding members of the Million Tree Pledge, aiming for Artfinder to plant 1 million trees by 2030.

We've actually just gone live with a new crowdfunding campaign.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

That it is always a rollercoaster, for better or for worse, and all you can do is your very best in any given situation.

Advice that was given to me once that I will never forget is that ‘everything will always be worse than you think.’ Worse than your worst-case forecasts and projections, worse in ways you haven’t even imagined yet. I think once you come to terms with that, the bad times are at least never a surprise and you can really dig in and learn from it all.

During the hardest times with Artfinder, I learned that you have to look after yourself. It isn’t optional. I started learning about mindfulness and learnt to let go of a lot of things, to find a balance of who and what needs how much input from me, which is still a source of constant adjustment as teams grow and the businesses’ needs change. I did a lot of meditation and more exercise, particularly strength training, including calisthenics which I love. Finding things in life that are rewarding, things that feel like progress, when every day at work does not feel like progress, felt particularly important at that time.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

The main platform is built in-house from the ground up on a proprietary set of technologies (although we use a lot of open sources!). We’re currently migrating all of our emails over to Bloomreach, from a number of smaller providers, which is a huge and exciting project, which will really increase our capacity in the email channel.

We have also recently moved to Basecamp for project management. Covid forced us into remote work quite suddenly in March 2020, but around a year later we re-evaluated everything and made the decision to officially become a remote business, long term.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

The founders of Basecamp literally wrote the book on remote working - Remote, Office Not Required, which was written long before the Covid pandemic made remote working a norm for so many more of us. It has truly inspired Artfinder’s remote working journey in so many ways - from lessons like you can stop worrying your people aren’t working hard enough, and instead try to focus on stopping them from working too much (much more likely to happen), to set the appropriate pace and tools for remote collaboration.

The other incredible book that has really influenced my approach to business, was Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux, which looks in-depth at successful self-managing businesses around the world and offers hope for ways of empowering employees.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Pretty much every time I took advice against my “gut feel” this has in some way backfired. I think it is very important not to underestimate the strength of our inner instinct.

Referring to more specific advice, I was “advised” by a number of people not to raise money through crowdfunding with a £0 pre-committed at the start, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. I was told this would mean the campaign would fail. Yet, we did exactly that, trusting our instinct that the community we’ve been building over the years would support us. This was a huge risk, yet it paid off big time. We’ve raised a total of £1m in that round.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

Although we don’t have any roles open right now we’re always keen to meet passionate talented people who want to change the world and want to join us on our journey! Check our careers page in a couple of months as we’re going to look at our next phase of expansion.

Where can we go to learn more?

Website