Interview with DesignersCouch dot com
Posted on September 16, 2009
Filed Under Startups
Who are the founders of the site? Where is the startup based?
The founder of Designers’Couch is Damian Madray, creative director at Depthskins Design Studio. This start-up is a project by the creative studio.
What makes this startup unique? What is the technology behind it?
This design community is unique because of the mantra on which it’s built on, not exactly its technology. Designers’Couch is a community that accepts members based on their portfolio and passion towards design. Once a member have benefits include receiving special discounts on design products and services, free access to webinars and Designers’Couch events.
The site is built on PHP/MySQL and offers a slew of features like rating critiques, submitting portfolio, keeping designs private, member directory and many other features.
What are the main characterstics of your startup?
The main characteristics of Designers’Couch are:
Critique System – this allows members to enter no less than 140 characters thus encouraging and requiring constructive critiques instead of one liners.
Experts – our expert system is meant to encourage friendly competition and points are earned through every useful critique given on a design. It will also highlight those who are experts at their craft thus putting them on the forefront to employers.
Discounts – through the community our partners offer special discounts on products and services designers use. For example, Firehost.com would offer a special discount on its hosting or Subernova offers a discount of it’s own. These servers can allow designers to save on everything things the use for their freelance business.
Collaboration – though not completely done, this will be a key characteristic of Designers’Couch that will allow members to collaborate easily with each other.
Is your startup free?
Yes, it’s completely free to join. All we ask is for members to submit 5 of their own design for review. Once they pass this review stage, full membership is granted.
What is your business model?
Designers’Couch is a non-profit model developed as our way of giving back to the design community.
What is the main idea behind it? Why is your startup worth spending time?
The idea is to target a niche: designers; offer them the key items they need as designers, that is, a place to interact, learn, inspire and be inspired.
What are your plans for the future?
We’ve have great plans for the future that will help us meet our goals of bring exposure to members, creating an educational environment and interactive one. Many of these plans cannot be revealed but the near future involves perfecting our system and promoting the community.
Who are your main competitors?
In the design community we all do our part to give back to the community so competition is not like it is in the business world. However, our competitors in this area would be Behance.net. There’s many more but we like Behance the most. I think they’re doing a great job so since we look up to them, they are our biggest competitors.
