Once in a while, I'll be at an art event on a rooftop or gallery somewhere; wine glass in hand, talking future tech and economics with a small audience. Eventually, someone from the group will innocently ask me: "Toye what is ARTISH, your company supposed to be?".
My response is always the same: "It's just like art"
Usually, I prepare myself for the follow-ups; “But you create very artsy content”, “Yeah, ARTISH is so creative, why not call it art?" etc. I always laugh and appreciate the feedback, but I don't say anything else.
Poets hate the word "like". In a poet's mind, to say something is 'like' another thing is an incomplete comparison, a watered-down metaphor. Almost as though, you were not bold enough to call the thing as it truly is. What I usually don't say at those art parties (to avoid boring them to death), is that the word 'ARTISH' was conceived as a playful contraption of 'Art' and the — informal — suffix, '-Ish'. But behind the name is a much longer backstory involving a university and idealistic young entrepreneurs.
ARTISH began as a creative collective while I was still an undergrad at the University of Ibadan, run by a group of arts and tech friends with skills that ranged from copywriting to photography, visual design and programming. There was literally no gig we couldn't do.
But in Nigeria, creators and freelancers have a hard time getting recognised, clients and (or) getting paid for their work. So in 2016, we began collecting a database of young digital creators and technical consultants. The mission was simple; to connect SMEs to high-quality creative and technical talent for short to mid-term projects.
For three years, we conceptualised web and mobile apps did some product management work, worked on digital marketing campaigns for some big brands and hosted concerts, exhibitions and parties. But the intermediary role we played did not only reduce the purpose of our collective to nothing more than an HR resource, it was also an unsustainable business model for our more ambitious goals.
Our solution to getting out of the people management trap was to go cross-platform. It started with social blogs on Twitter and Instagram, where we documented the creative scene and its adjacent pop culture in 2019. In 2020, we began tilting towards a content-led consulting operation and legally incorporated with Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission in Februrary 2021 (RC. 1756716).
One thing we immediately realised however, was that some of the problems facing Nigeria’s creator economy, were problems affecting the global creator economy in general.
Nearly twenty-five years ago, Bill Gates’s “Content Is King” essay became a textual keynote address on the possibilities for content creators to make money through the internet. In the mid-aughts, future-forward thinkers like former WIRED editor Chris Anderson also theorised the long-tail power law, which argued for small consistent sales of creative work via actor-network effects like word of mouth and recommendation algorithms. The idea was further expanded by Kevin Kelly as the 1000 true fans model for monetising digital labour. As a single understudy, all three concepts emphasise the power of the internet in empowering individuals to earn a decent living at low marginal operating costs.
But that was over a decade and a half before social media began aggregating user activity, likes and follows as metrics to make content easier to monetise. Critics have since questioned if content is truly king, or if the long-tail power law of 1000 true fans will ever become reality, especially since the result of web2 has been similar to the old-fashioned Hollywood-style superstar effect — where a few popular creators at the top of the pile earn a bulk of any creative sector’s total revenue, and share of voice can be weaponised for the worst possible outcomes as seen in the presidency of Donald Trump.
With the internet now on the cusp of web3, creator economy innovators are now tilting towards post-capitalist business models aided by the blockchain and virtual communities grounded by gamification and collective ownership of resources. However, to prevent web3 from failing to the same loudest-shouter-takes-all pitfall as web2, care must still be taken to ensure niche creators can also benefit from the internet’s promise to democratise content ownership and ensure equal distribution of wealth across race, creed or gender globally.
This is why we’re building an app, that can serve as a leveller of sorts by providing creators with a trust-based market access with community benefits and collaborative resources.
But first, some background based on global trends:
#Trend 1: Remote Work Is Here To Stay
The COVID-19 lockdowns saw corporations adapting to a hybrid or fully remote work structure, and many companies are planning to keep things that way, even after vaccines have rolled out.
#Trend 2: The Age of Digital Labour
Advertising, media and art sectors have mostly gone digital, as a result there are more and more campaigns, market research, curatorial and subtle messaging gigs led by virtual communities that require creative or digital labour
Trend 3: New rules of engagement
Last year CNBC valued America’s freelance market alone at $1.2trillion. NASDAQ reported, “90% of companies believe that a blend of full-time and freelance workers provides them with a competitive advantage”
Research tells us creators and freelancers around the world face three major problems:
- Market accessibility: The creator economy, has a big trust problem. Freelancers can’t directly access those who can pay for their skills. Big companies also have to comb through intermediaries, middlemen and recruitment agencies to find them.
- Unregulated Payments: Many freelancers and creators find it hard to set a standard market rate for their services. Most freelancers are also often owed by big clients over long 45–90 day payment cycles.
- No Collaborative Community: Creators and freelancers do not have access to collaborative resources and communities that can boost their professional profile.
The ARTISH app is the simplicity of Instagram meets the utility of Upwork. We want to aggregate creator communities to connect freelancers to people who can pay for their work and services.
This is our audacious next frontier because some of the solutions we will proffer to the problem of freelancing the creator gig economy haven't been attempted yet.
These will be achieved by aggressively developing web and mobile app products that leverage strategic partnerships with brands, corporate partners and influential creators/creator-led virtual communities.
Some Of Our Product Features
The Job Board: This is our main product a job board where freelancers can be hired, tracked and rated. At launch, this will be initially for freelancers in creative fields like programming, coding, UI/UX design, photography, copywriting, graphic design and web-development etc. Subsequent updates will open-up opportunities to other gig-based labour markets, that can be automated and tracked within the parameters of our app’s functionality.
Immersive Content Delivery: Content has been the main driver of user engagement with ARTISH and we intend to carry on curating and designing content for creators who sign-up on our app. Part of our new app will be improved delivery of what we already know how to do best using creator editorial spotlights, push notifications and beautiful design. We're also including a live-stream broadcast, that will function like online radio for our podcast network and other audio-formatted programming.
The Coll3ctive: Virtual communities are the lifeblood of the internet. But while we want our UX to be exciting and enjoyable, we don't want to fall into the algorithmic trap of gamifying user engagement and user-generated content for ad money. User home feeds will mainly feature updates of available gigs, events, and merchandise on the user’s network. Via the Coll3ctive, users and recruiters will be able to virtually gain access to creator communities, organised according to their designated skills, location and level of expertise.
A user's network is be termed as their collective. Collectives will be categorised by skillset and will be a combination of merchants and talents who will make up specific freelancer and creator communities. Naturally, this means that the collective(s) a freelancer joins will have a direct effect on the kind of gigs requests they will get. Users will only have access to a limited number of collectives at sign-up but will be able to access more communities for a subscription fee.
User Profiles: We want user profiles on the ARTISH app to be intuitive and useful. Real-time information on skills, working hours, market rates and level of expertise will be available publicly. Privately, a wallet feature will give freelancers total control over their earnings, along with additional features that give freelancers more financial independence, and strategic positioning for the communities they care about. The justification for this framework is to eventually pivot into a token-based in-app economy where a user's accrued activity points can be converted to cryptocurrency. This will not only ensure long-term user adoption but ARTISH's own independent and sustainable virtual economy.
Virtual Partner Hubs: Freelance and creator communities will be synergised via virtual-partner hubs. This will be sold as an enterprise product to businesses such as digital agencies, record labels, art collectives, urban fashion brands, film studios, animation studios and corporations etc who have a track record of enabling the creator economy.
The Shop: We don’t just want to aggregate virtual creator and freelancer communities for gigs alone. We also want to empower creators with tools and resources to grow revenue + maximise their audience, online and offline. This will be done via a virtual storefront, built into our feature app. This store will be used to sell digital and physical products + related monetisable services made available for sale via our community
This is our next frontier because the future of work will be built on niche creator communities and requires a radical new approach to think. Despite the immense possibilities for the creator economy, many products that exist today still don’t have enough use-cases that optimise their revenue funnels, or retention for their ever expanding youthful user-base.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is where I rest my case. You can join our waitlist.
Sincerly,
Toye Sokunbi,
Founder, ARTISH
A more detailed investor pitchdeck is available on request. For enquires, tips and investment, contact us here: contact@artish.world
