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Tell us about you and your business?
My name is Gaurav. I am the founder of Bookanartist.co an online marketplace to hire graffiti artists, mural artists for your next project. It might be a feature wall in your office, exterior wall that needs branding work, restaurant wall etc., if you are looking for a graffiti/mural artist for hire, bookanartist.co is the web
How did you come up with the idea?
The idea came to me around 3 years ago when I was in Cuba with my friends. We were hiking to see the ugliest mural ever made. It was dinosaur mural carved on the side of the mountain. Insane size but poorly done. On the way back I said to myself “shit wouldn’t it be nice if it was easy to hire a street artist to paint a wall”. Didn’t do anything about it for a year and a half. Then I did my research and realized yes it was hard to hire a good street artist. The complexity of hiring street includes few things, what type of street artist you want, which artist will be the best for the design you want, how much is your budget, will the artist be available, etc. etc. Google can’t do that for you, but we can. After 6 months of web development, bookanartist.co was launched. Our search page is the only search page in the world that shows a list of handpicked mural artists and their previous work, and with an ability to send a message.
What made you start the business?
Aside from the love of mural art, I was getting tired of going to meetings in corporate settings and not making decisions. People would have all the facts they need but won’t make the decision just because of inertia. We all tend to do nothing when there is a bit of risk and that got to me.
What are the biggest challenges of the business?
This one is hard. When you work for an established business there is a person dedicated for everything. You are having an IT issue, go to the IT team, you have data issue go to Finance. When are starting your business there are no dedicated teams. It’s just you and couple of others. You need to learn a lot and be jack of all trades.
Secondly making decisions of your own. Back as an employee most of what I did was provide recommendation, but I didn’t make the decisions. Now I need to make decisions. I never thought it would be hard, but it is because in 80% of the times I don’t have data to back my decision. All I’ve got is gut feeling and trial and error.
How do you find motivation to get working without a boss or supervisor?
The motivation comes from the love of the business and knowing you are doing something adds value to parties working with you.
Where do you see yourself in 2019, 2020?
End of 2019, we intend to be in 30 cities and by end of 2020 we want to be live in 100 cities. Our goal is to become a central place to hire the mural artists in the entire world. Currently we are live in London, Brighton, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane.
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