Crew

01 / WHAT IT BUILT

What the company did

Crew was a Canadian freelance marketplace for design and development projects, founded by Mikael Cho, Stephanie Liverani, and Angus Woodman. The company began as Ooomf, an app discovery startup that in 2012 relaunched as a marketplace connecting vetted mobile and web developers and designers with projects that fit their skill set; it renamed to Crew in 2014 and raised $2.1 million led by Fred Destin of Atlas Venture (with Naval Ravikant, Real Ventures, iNovia Capital, Boldstart). Crew set a high bar for vetting - accepting around 1 in 20 applicants, requiring a personal portfolio and live work - and later raised $10 million (Ryan Moore of Accomplice; board included John Stokes of Real Ventures), with some freelancers earning more than $140,000 a year through the platform. Unsplash, the photography library, originally spun out of Crew. In 2017 Dribbble acquired Crew (April 2017, per Wikipedia) as the cofounders shifted focus to the fast-growing Unsplash; Crew continued to run largely as-is while Dribbble folded its talent matchmaking algorithms into Dribbble Hiring.

03 / EVENT HISTORY

Events in the structured record

1. 2016
   Acquisition

   Crew was acquired.

05 / CAUSAL CHAIN

How the factors connect

1. 01

   The Canadian freelance marketplace for design and development projects was founded by Mikael Cho, Stephanie Liverani and Angus Woodman; Unsplash was incubated at Crew.

2. 02

   Raised approximately $12.16 million in total — $2.1 million in 2014, then $10 million more.

3. 03

   Dribbble acquired the company in 2017.

4. 04

   No audited loss figure was publicly disclosed.