Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: It’s not that simple. Video is a much more complex thing because producing a video is a lot more expensive and cumbersome than producing even a skeleton logo design.

Ross Kimbarovsky: Precisely. There are a lot of factors involved. There’s the cost. There’s pricing. There is capability. There is our comfort level with presenting the customer with enough choice. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 6)

SM: Who do you consider as your direct competitors, who follow that exact model where people are actually submitting work before they get paid as opposed to be hired based on resumes and feedback?

RK: In the graphic design space, our primary competitor is a company called 99Designs out of Australia. It has a similar business model. Our communities are different. The products that we have are different. I’ll give you two ways to look at it. I mentioned earlier that we work with more brands and agencies than all of our competitors, including 99Designs, combined. In part, it’s because of those differences that many more businesses choose CrowdSPRING. But there’s also another difference. When you look at the average types of projects, both from the perspective of the businesses that are posting them and the creatives who are working, our projects tend to be about 50% to 70% higher in value in terms of the awards that are being offered. In part, it’s reflective of the kinds of businesses that are posting. In part, it’s reflective of the kind of community. >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 4)

SM: What needs to happen? Is there anything that could happen policy wise that would give you a reason to have more presence in the US? Or are there geographies in the US where you could do better cost structure wise? >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 5)

SM: The question I asked was a little different. I asked how many agencies are using CrowdSPRING for generating business?

RK: Working on CrowdSPRING as creatives?

SM: Yes. >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your sense of what will happen to the call center industry in the U.S. over this decade? Obviously, the cost structures are changing in Asia. For instance, the cost structure for India is changing substantially. There is some level of burnout going on because of the time zone issue. You can talk about what’s happening in the Philippines as well. What do you think is going to happen to call centers catering to U.S. customers, based on those dynamics, and what is a trend that you see? >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 2)

SM: What kind of outsourcing work do you do?

RF: It’s primarily complex customer service interactions and primarily voice.

SM: So, it’s a voice contact center?

RF: Correct. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 4)

SM: You mentioned naming projects. If you’re getting 100 different names, how does the payment work? There’s no more work to do after the naming is done.

RK: The wrap-up for naming projects is simple. When you pick your favorite name, we pay the person who recommended it. So that you understand, we are sensitive to intellectual property issues both in simple writing projects like naming and in complex projects. It’s one reason why we work with more big brands and agencies than all of our competitors combined. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 3)

SM: So, you said half of your over 109,000 [freelancers] are from the United States. What other countries do you see a lot of representation from?

RK: We have a very strong representation, obviously, from English-speaking countries. We have strong representation from Canada, from the United Kingdom, from Australia. We see a lot of designers from Asia, Malaysia. We see a lot of designers from India. But generally, we see a varied mix. So, if we were to look, for example, at 2011 and the winning designers in our projects, there are probably between 75 and 100 different countries represented in terms of winning designers from those countries. >>>