Jun 6, 2018
Rob Kalin about hard work The last 10 percent it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90 percent.
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Rob Kalin about hard work The last 10 percent it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90 percent.
'’The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.'’ - Rob Kalin, co-founder of Etsy
C R A F T I V I S M ~ E T S Y
The World Economic Forum nominated Etsy as one of their 2009 Technology Pioneers. Etsy's founder Rob Kalin will be traveling to Davos, Switzerland to represent the community and to voice Etsy's mission at the January meeting. The slogans "Art = Capital" or "Creativity = Capital," which Beuys often used in his artworks, could be understood as shorthand notations of his ideas, and suggest that creativity and art are the new currency for the transformation of society that he envisioned. The multiple La rivoluzione siamo Noi (1972), "We are the revolution," recalls Beuys' proclamation that "Art is the only revolutionary force." In this work, the artist seems to stride boldly into the future, urging us to accompany him on his way to the revolution. Definitely, Etsy is on the right path!
Around that same time, Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy, was thinking of launching an e-learning initiative. He showed me a diagram of how he thought college worked today. You invest in four years after 12 years of schooling--in essence you gorge on knowledge and wisdom and hope that it lasts until your retirement years. But this model was developed in a day when you only lived until your 50s. Now that we live till our 80s and 100s, he reasoned, 16 years of education early on in life would probably not carry us all the way through. We'd need a few snack bars along the way.
The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90% -Rob Kalin, Etsy
In 2010, Etsy sellers moved $314 million worth of merchandise—cuff links made from 19th-century shotgun shells ($50), knives forged by a master blacksmith in Albuquerque ($150), sweaters knit by a grandmother in Portugal ($225)—a 74 percent increase over the previous year. There is so much weird stuff on Etsy, in fact, that it has spawned a fan site, Regretsy.com (tag line: "Where DIY meets WTF"). Three hundred and fourteen million dollars is an impressive sum, but it amounts to about $785 per seller after commissions—and before taxes. It seems fair to assume, using statistics the company has released, that there are fewer than 1,000 sellers who make $30,000 a year or more, and a mere handful who make more than $100,000. As one of the site's top sellers wrote in a blog post in 2009: "Your odds of making $10,000 per year [on Etsy] are better than winning $10,000 through the Powerball, though not by a ton." The only Etsy millionaires, it turns out, are Etsy shareholders. Etsy requires that all new products listed on the site be made by the people selling them—the use of mass production, that wonderful innovation of modern capitalism, is verboten. "Etsy has made it possible for a lot of small businesses to get off the ground," says Dale Dougherty, co-founder of O'Reilly Media and the publisher of Make magazine, which covers the do-it-yourself economy. "But even the most successful crafters run up against the limits of their own labor. Handmade can be a limited idea." In other words, the very qualities that make Etsy so attractive to new sellers put the most successful Etsy sellers in an awkward position: They must stay small or abandon Etsy. For Kalin and his investors, the questions are even tougher: Can a site dedicated to DIY scale? Or is Etsy, despite Kalin's ambition and grandiosity, just a small idea?
Excerpted from Max Chafkin's great profile of Etsy and its founder Rob Kalin for Inc. If you're an Etsy aficionado, this is a must read.
Make sure that you stay directly involved, even as things get bigger.
- Rob Kalin
The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.
- Rob Kalin