A "Student Entrepreneur" Experience at HBS

Scott Belsky, Contributing Writer

Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: News

Soon after I got accepted to HBS, I left a job at Goldman Sachs with the intention to travel, write, and bask in idea-generation for a few months prior to moving to Boston. Instead, I became obsessed with one idea in particular and inadvertently started a business prior to starting business school. The two years that followed were a roller-coaster of challenges in building a start-up team, developing, launching, and marketing a series of products…and showing up to class on time.

"Behance" was founded after about 100 interviews I conducted with creative teams and individuals - people in large agencies/companies, small design firms, and talented freelancers. I was fascinated by the inefficiencies in the marketplace, notably how Creatives build professional networks and how companies find and hire creative talent. I realized that the creative community was extremely disorganized and inefficient. The problems existed both on a micro-level (low personal productivity and brainstorms were often a waste of time), and a macro-level (people relied on old rolodexes or MySpace pages, and there was no "professional" online platform for Creatives).

The summer before HBS was spent developing an outline of a company that would boost productivity and help organize the creative community. The first few hundred dollars were spent on the trademark "Make Ideas Happen," and then it started: I was scheduling meetings, and telling enough people about the concept that I suddenly felt accountable! With a small round of funding from friends and family, I hired a Chief of Design to focus full-time on developing the business, just three weeks before I packed my bags for Boston.

During the RC year, I spent almost every weekend and certainly hell-week and vacation time in what had become the "Behance Office" in New York. Our team grew to three full-time employees by March of 2007. Our first site was a blog that summarized the research and tips on how creative teams can boost productivity. We also designed a product, the "Action Pad," that would help people manage creative projects. The product was quickly picked up by the San Francisco MOMA stores among others around the country, and we started selling an expanded selection online. Our content also led to interviews on MSNBC and ABC News. But we had no intention of being a paper products company…and I know my section-mates were confused by a business-model that appeared to rely on paper sales. However, the product sales helped fund our main focus, developing the "Behance Network."

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