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Launch HN: Awesomic (YC S21) – Get design tasks done with 24-hour turnaround

igammarays 2021-08-16 16:41:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Classic Ukrainian arbitrage - selling Eastern talent to the Western market for prices they can't believe with the high quality that they don't expect. I love it, I did the same thing, most of the design work on my startup was also done by Ukrainian designers. Fantastic idea ... win-win.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 18:00:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi! Glad you liked the idea and thank you for the feedback! I agree that Europe (and Ukraine in particular) has an amazing talent pool not yet connected widely to the global companies.

From the perspective of design community we build, we want to uncover Ukrainian creative talents to the world. They really deserve to work with high-end companies, get a global recognition and do not loose a social capital while being a solo freelancer. Still, I would not call that a standard arbitrage as we are not selling hours or smth — we provide companies with the smart matching and an efficient process to get design done, all in one app. For both sides of users, we're focusing on the added value.

egypturnash 2021-08-16 15:57:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Only $7/wk for rush jobs? Damn that sounds like a shit deal for the person actually doing the work, even if y'all take absolutely nothing off the top. I wouldn't touch that kind of deal with a ten foot pole, even if I was shitting out the most banal, generic work possible.

Oh okay that's just the first week trial period, it's a monthly rate of $500 for "graphic" work or $1000 for "product", that's not as shit but it's still like $16 or $32/day (not accounting for weekends, I don't feel like seeing if your rules cover that, and again that's before your fees and any payment processing fees), and that's still sure not anywhere near what I'd be charging for a month of 24h turnaround.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 16:22:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi! Thank you for pointing out our pricing. I totally agree it's not final and we might want to reconsider it to keep the high standards. Now all of the designers are based in Europe and we can be more cost-effective.

Regarding the promo $7 trial — this price is not because the work is worthless. We pay for you trying Awesomic :) After testing some boring targeting, we decided to pay our designers instead of paying Facebook Ads. It seems promising as designers' work "sells" itself and clients can test everything live — like turnaround, quality and communication.

adampk 2021-08-16 17:14:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Very great response to maybe not the most polite version of a good question, love the energy!

egypturnash 2021-08-17 00:03:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm an artist; I'm gonna reflexively resist anything that looks like uberization of my craft. :)

adampk 2021-08-17 16:53:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Totally get it! :)

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 17:46:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

thank you for the support!

egypturnash 2021-08-17 00:22:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

"Paying designers instead of paying Facebook Ads" sounds good! What kind of rates are you paying the people who're actually doing the work, though? And what's your plan for when the funding runs out - are you gonna follow Uber's path and start shaving more and more out of what the designers get?

Aaand... if a client and designer who you matched up decide they would like to pursue a working relationship outside of your app, without paying you your cut for future work, do you consider this a success, or a failure?

romasevastyanov 2021-08-17 05:07:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> What kind of rates are you paying the people who're actually doing the work, though?

We pay middle and middle+ rates in locations where we hire designers. So, Awesomic designers get the same or even more than other designers in the same location. Also, we have paid days off, and we are working on free health care program for our designers. So, does Upwork has paid day-offs or free health care program?

> And what's your plan for when the funding runs out - are you gonna follow Uber's path and start shaving more and more out of what the designers get?

We've been profitable for two years before we joined YC. Even now, we are profitable and haven't used YC's $125k. Still, we are raising money to hire more developers to build a better product – platform. Create an excellent product with AI – is super hard and expensive.

> if a client and designer who you matched up decide they would like to pursue a working relationship outside of your app without paying you your cut for future work, do you consider this a success, or a failure?

In two years working on this concept – we haven't had any cases like that. Designers like to work with Awesomic because they can grow and develop new skills on different projects. I am always happy when we deliver a great project after long cooperation.

Here is an example of how Norvegian startup worked with our designers for 18+ months in a row – https://www.awesomic.io/case-study/entirebody

disruptthelaw 2021-08-16 17:17:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I haven’t seen the terms of the deal but it presume that most customers on the monthly retainer will not submit a task every day, maybe on average every 4 or 5 business days. That changes the maths quite a bit

notahacker 2021-08-16 20:05:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Determining "fair use" could be the challenging bit. Sounds like the potential clients who see a flat monthly fee as the attraction are the ones who could really benefit from having a designer on payroll but don't have the funds

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 17:49:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes, thank you! We guarantee 24h turnaround Mon-Fri. The designers matched keep working with the same brands for a long time (we have 18+ months client already, one of the early ones) so they need weekends for sure.

memset 2021-08-16 16:30:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Just wanted to chime in as an early satisfied Awesomic user. I always have half a dozen side projects going (as you can see via my "Show HN" history) and always have a little bit of design needs that I can't do via Bootstrap. I've been burned by upwork/fiverr in the past who charge $100/hr with no upper bound on the amount of time it will take to iterate on a design that will work. I've often just scrapped the design work entirely because it was too hard to get to the right end result.

The platform basically guarantees that I'll see some progress once per day (the predictability is nice), and I don't have to worry about using up my 1 revision, or whatever I'd agreed to. If I choose to spend the entire month on a single project to get it right, then great, I don't have to do a calculation every time.

Congrats on getting into YC!

OJFord 2021-08-16 17:14:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You pay $500pcm for graphics design work on your side projects?

Are they income generating or are you just really committing to getting them/one off the ground without actually quitting 'the day job'?

memset 2021-08-16 17:27:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I start/stop my subscription depending on the work that I have.

Some of the side projects (for example, themusiciansnotebook.com) are actually revenue generating and so I have more wiggle room to spend $500 for a month's worth of design. For example, I make notebooks on behalf of others, so I will work with a designer to help create covers/graphics/etc.

Since I pay for a month at a time, once the work for the above project is done, I'll use the remaining time to have Awesomeic's folks help with wireframes for other projects, which may not have revenue or be launched (prototypes, etc) so that I fully utilize the platform.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 17:06:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

hi! Thank you for much for sharing your thoughts and feedback!

We also hate this concept of limiting revisions or a need to negotiate every single detail. It takes focus from the work and result to some routine.

I am so happy you saw Awesomic as a valuable alternative!

hizxy 2021-08-16 19:38:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

These design services are getting gross. Reinforces the age old design stereotype of a support based model churning out production work. I know there is a market for everything — and good designers need not worry — but really makes ya think about the value we place on people. Carry on and good luck satisfying a customer base that wants something for nothing.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 20:25:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi! Thank you for the direct feedback. I am not sure I got your point correctly, so I would kindly ask to share my point of view below.

Awesomic stands for empowering creative design community from Europe, Ukraine in particular (where we are from). These are not only "good designers", but really great and vetted talents that delivered creative work for 500+ global companies already. More than 90 of them are YC companies we truly respect and are inspired by. For example, we have the designer with several Red Dot Award, a German international design prize awarded since 1955.

These are the people I truly respect.

hizxy 2021-08-17 01:05:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thank you.

Closi 2021-08-16 16:38:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The one thing that isn't clear to me is how much design time I get with the subscription - I note that I will get an update on progress every day, but it would be useful to understand how much time will go into that design iteration.

For example - assistance with pitch decks is listed, however if the designer is only taking 1 hour a day to help with it, it may take weeks to get it to where it needs to be.

romasevastyanov 2021-08-16 17:43:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Awesomic does not re-sell human hours like Upwork. Instead, we guarantee a business result. So the time designer spends on a task is more depending on the type of task.

Some tasks are really possible to complete within one day – like banner ads. However, some tasks require iterating a week over week to fully complete – like a good website created from scratch. In this case, you'll receive everyday updates to see the progress. The whole speed depends on designer output and feedback from clients.

The best way is to ask the designer for a kind estimation when the deadline matters. With urgent projects you can double/triple your subscription, for example, for this exact month, so more designers would be able to connect and deliver results faster.

Closi 2021-08-16 21:15:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Awesomic does not re-sell human hours like Upwork. Instead, we guarantee a business result.

I don't know what that means though, as a buyer. Like the pricing refers to me getting a dedicated designer, so I assume that means that they are non-shared, i.e. they are only working on my account, however the pricing seems way too low to justify that.

So then I assume they are juggling loads of clients (although in that case, I'm not entirely sure what dedicated means) but then I can't get a feel for how busy these people are and if I'm getting a lot of support or not a lot of support. Particularly considering the prices/savings are benchmarked against a full time employee.

Maybe this is just me though, I would totally use this service but the pricing model is just too opaque and puts me off (but maybe it will work for others?). Is it just me that can't understand what I'm getting?

Like if I want a pitch deck done, which I can estimate will take a great designer a few days, and I want it done by the end of the week, what subscription level do I get? Or do you just name your subscription level price and I have no way to estimate it prior to you giving me a quote?

But again, it's probably just me not 'getting' it.

admax88q 2021-08-16 23:49:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think the structure means that the designer is not shared. I think it means that they don't change the designer between asks, unless the original is unavailable.

Which makes sense IMO, then the designer can take on as many clients as they have bandwidth for.

purplepatrick 2021-08-17 01:44:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I like the idea and wish you the best of luck. In my experience, this is a bit of a “neither fish nor fowl” kind of situation, though.

Your model seems most viable for customers who need design work all the time, e.g. to replace a FT resource. However, whenever I was involved in a company that needed frequent design work, we ended up holding on to dear life to any designer we liked because there is so much variance in terms of quality, work habits, communication skills that we happily paid up for continuity and control by hiring full time instead.

On the other hand, for many customers of those freelance sites that you identify as comps, that’s not the situation, though. For them, design work usually comes up in chunks. So, those folks may attempt to churn and reenroll frequently in your service to match the flow of their design needs. To prevent that kind of churn, you may end up trying to manage deliverables and/or debate semantics (e.g. what constitutes a “task”, 50 app screens or picking the color of a button?), which ends up driving customers away.

This last bit could be remedied if you built a very detailed catalogue of tasks, but that may not be worth anyone’s while…

chewmieser 2021-08-16 15:33:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Interesting! The price seems very reasonable and the turnaround time is very impressive. It would have been entirely reasonable to have a slightly longer turnaround time but as long as you can support 24hrs then by all means.

Hopefully you don't end up with too much abuse of the trial!

Very cool. Congrats on the launch! I'll have to keep ya in mind next time I may need something...

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 15:43:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thank you for such a kind feedback! You're right, some prefer turnaround being even longer to not comment so often. For complex or ongoing projects that may be the case — managers can comment whenever have time, still, they are guaranteed with a designer working and updating tasks daily. Looking forward to you trying us out!

TekMol 2021-08-16 16:49:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

    On freelance platforms, it takes
    up to 7-14 days to find the right designer.
How does this compare to Upwork and Fiverr? I would expect if you post a job there with the statement "Please only apply if you can work on it today" you would get a lot of applications of people who have time right now?

romasevastyanov 2021-08-16 17:39:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi, thanks for your attention! Yes, that is correct and then you need to check tons of portfolios and find a relevant one.

Then you would negotiate a price, project size, and terms. It takes days including delays in answers and timezones.

Once you start working with someone online, it doesn't guarantee that this person will deliver work on time or do not disappear in the middle of a project (we had this before Awesomic ourselves). So the search is starting over.

Modern design projects typically require different sets of skills too – UI&UX, branding/logo design, graphic design, or illustrations. So typically designer is good at one main field or style, and others are minors. That multiplies the complexity of finding the right designer in a long-term.

With Awesomic, you always get matched with the best person for your task on the same day and get the first result on the next business day.

atlasunshrugged 2021-08-16 16:48:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hey Stacy, sounds cool but isn't this basically the premise of Designpickle?

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 20:53:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi! I might have missed your comment first, sorry for the longer reply! Thank you for this question! I think DP is a good design company, still, we might be different in a few dimensions.

First, we have different focuses. I see them going after e-commerce and graphics/illustrations, while we strongly develop a product design expertise serving global startups. Then, what we do is we build own design community (btw, being very inspired by YC community too). Having these two segments of users, we build our own product and a matching algorithm between them (you might even notice this magnet analogy in our logo).

So I respect other companies doing things that look similar. Still, we just build what we believe is best for the users we're serving.

atlasunshrugged 2021-08-17 10:10:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Interesting, I've used them at a few startups (including a YC one) so I'm skeptical they have that much of a different focus but the community aspect and matching algos are interesting, it's something we tried to do at Gigster back in the day too.

xarici_ishler 2021-08-17 21:06:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm from a CIS country (Azerbaijan) and I applaud you for taking on the challenge of empowering the local workforce and exposing them to foreign markets. There's a lot of untapped talent in ex-USSR countries that can produce outstanding work for a fraction of the cost of their western colleagues, while earning a pretty high (relative to local) income. I for one am working for a foreign startup for $23/h and am living a quite comfortable, even luxurious life, while saving a good chunk of my income.

One question in my head was left unanswered while I read through your post and website: who is responsible for finding and connecting with clients? How do you do that (or how are you planning to scale your current approach)?

umarsikander 2021-08-19 04:17:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Congrats on the launch! Really interesting idea, just signed up for the demo. Sending good vibes :)

romasevastyanov 2021-08-19 12:43:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thanks, see you on demo!

2021-08-16 15:40:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

aripickar 2021-08-16 15:29:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This is something that would have been really useful when I was trying to get a POC out for a startup I was working on, especially at 1/3 of the cost that we ended up paying for an agency with a lot longer turnaround time. Kudos on launching a product that looks really useful!

ps: For some reason the expansions of the FAQ tabs expands really slowly, might want to fix that.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 15:52:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi! Thank you! Yes, startups especially benefit from being both fast and cost-effective with us. When we just get into YC community a few months ago, our revenue naturally grew by 193% and the team grew from 15 to 50 just because of startups being around.

p.s. thanks for the sharp eye on FAQ! please tell me your browser (I keep fighting with Safari issues :) )

Brushfire 2021-08-16 15:56:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Congrats guys, exciting! How do you differentiate yourselves from other on-demand design services?

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 16:57:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hi and thank you for the great question!

The main points are:

- putting quality first, and connecting even award-winning designers.

- having a strong product design expertise (like UI/UX and animations) to serve startups while typical services covering simpler tasks like graphics for e-commerce. We can deliver products, prototypes and product MVPs for YC startups as well (90+ already tried us out).

- planning to release own API till the end of the year, so other apps users would be able to create their design requests over API.

As far as I know, we have the fastest turnaround policy being 24h always and for any type of tasks, including complex ones like branding.

moflome 2021-08-16 21:31:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Good answers! I’m a happy user of manypixels.co but they are limited in their focus and so glad to see your differentiation here. Will check it out!

Brushfire 2021-08-16 16:58:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Awesome. Excited to try it

MattGaiser 2021-08-16 15:33:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Our best-selling ad was a napkin left in a co-working space

Can we see this great ad?

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 15:38:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sure! Last week we made a blog post about our way to $100K ARR (early days of the company) and it includes photo of my co-founder with this napkin :) https://www.awesomic.io/blog/startup-journey-to-100-k

xwdv 2021-08-16 15:46:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The secret to a great best selling ad is simply to put an ad somewhere that people do not expect an ad and also has a lot of exposure to traffic.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 15:54:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That is so true! We were based at the startup-ish co-working space holding events before covid. That's how the right traffic came in.

jshchnz 2021-08-16 21:21:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Really interesting idea, just signed up for a demo!

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 21:45:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thank you! We'd be happy to show you around.

somberi 2021-08-16 19:58:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Dear Stacy, congrats on what seems like an useful service. Signed up for a week and have sent a project your way.

All the best.

Pavlyshyna 2021-08-16 20:30:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I am very thankful for you trusting Awesomic with your design project! Would love to be an useful service! :)

micromacrofoot 2021-08-16 22:15:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm not sure how I feel about the myriad of services that serve as the service layer between cheap talent in developing countries and the western world. These people are indeed talented (in varying degrees) but doesn't stuff like this simply hollow out the market for local talent?

Maybe this serves to break down barriers of language and nation, but is it also a product of the fact that we've built our society to be so expensive (education, bureaucracy, housing, regulation, you name it) that we're constantly eroding our skilled labor in favor of countries with less overhead?

2021-08-16 15:40:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

andrewmcwatters 2021-08-16 15:49:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

These company names are getting lazier by the year. Just call the company “Cool, Man” while you’re at it.

Not sure how competing with firms with the exact same business model on Clutch requires VC funding, but OK. Best of luck.

romasevastyanov 2021-08-16 15:59:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hey, thank you for noticing our name! We were initially named Pizdata which literally means "fucking amazing" in Ukrainian (where we are originally from).

We got a lot of local hype, word of mouth clients and even became an internet meme in Romania (where it has a very different meaning). Decided to change a name because of international clients not getting the joke (right after we tested early hypothesis).

Awesomic has the same meaning – "awesome on a cosmic level", by Urban Dictionary.

Here's a blog post where I described effect of such an aggressive naming – http://awesomic.io/blog/startup-journey-to-100-k

romasevastyanov 2021-08-16 16:35:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Not sure how competing with firms with the exact same business model on Clutch requires VC funding, but OK. Best of luck.

We are not competing with agencies from Clutch, that's our second target audience after startups. We help agencies scale faster while working with designers on the platform.

Awesomic is not an agency, it's a super simple tool where you can start working with a designer on the same day. And then constantly receive everyday updates on your design task.

Why do we need VC? Because we have 0 design managers and have no plans to hire ones. Instead, everything is managed by our product – platform. Most of the tasks are matched automatically by an algorithm.

And for the designer – Awesomic is a better solution versus platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. Designers don't like to hunt for the next freelance project, feel insecure to negotiate, but they are passionate about design. So Awesomic gives them what they want while caring about everything else.

andrewmcwatters 2021-08-16 17:12:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I understand that, but I’m the guy you’re selling to, and I don’t see any difference.

I need quality resources, and you can’t avoid the fact that you’re sourcing labor at the end of the day.

You’re effectively an agency to me. I pay you for labor. Whether I pay for labor on Upwork or your platform or an outsourcing agency makes absolutely no difference to me. I look at all of them as resource funnels.

And frankly, I don’t want to work with kids who call their company fucking awesome. Are you going to take my business needs seriously?

Imagine if Bloomberg called his company Jack-Off Capital. Or if Walmart called their business Cheap Bastards.

Is labor arbitrage fucking awesome? You bet. For the owners. You should call your company fuck the little guy. At least in western culture we don’t intentionally bring undue attention to the fact that we’re offshoring labor beyond a business transaction.

dang 2021-08-16 17:39:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hey, please don't break the site guidelines. You can make your substantive points without crossing into this sort of attack. The nationalistic swipe at the end is particularly not cool.

We've had to ask you this sort of thing more than once before. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this going forward, we'd appreciate it.

andrewmcwatters 2021-08-16 19:28:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I understand you’re particularly sensitive as an administrator to nationalistic comments, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t categorize my matter-of-fact statement as some sort of nationalistic sentiment.

dang 2021-08-16 19:42:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That wasn't a matter-of-fact statement—it was an us-vs.them swipe drawing a line ("western culture") which itself is already provocative in this context.

Also, please don't ignore the other ways in which you broke the site guidelines with your post.

andrewmcwatters 2021-08-16 20:29:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It was a matter-of-fact statement. Observational life will show you that we don't call out the fact that we arbitrage labor. Tim Cook doesn't tell customers that Apple keeps prices attractive enough by utilizing cheap Asian labor. It is tasteless.

If you find my statements to be "us-versus-them," that's your opinion, but I would find no fault in what these people are doing if they were Americans versus Ukrainians. I find fault in how immature the business approach is.

I acknowledge that I am not being nice. Neither is building a business, arbitraging labor and calling it awesome that you can exploit workers globally. But you suggest to me that you believe otherwise. Is that not a fair opinion? Besides, you call my comments nationalistic when they are clearly not.

A nationalistic comment would be, "Western culture is superior because we do not..." versus an observational statement which is "In western culture we do not..."

However, it's a common theme here that posters, versus commenters, have favoritism preemptively due to the good faith guideline. So, believe me, I'm well aware of them.

But if I posted an article here that wasn't nice, you would, by these guidelines, expect me to just be nice, and yet that's not how the world works, and plenty of posters here call out things all the time. It's a strange dynamic to assume otherwise.

walteweiss 2021-08-17 13:37:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I agree with this commenter, and I see nothing nationalistic in their statement.