Mikael Cho on psychology and design, and how side projects saved his startup

DN FM

We're joined by Mikael Cho to hear about his unique career path, the intersection of psychology and design, and chasing perfection; he also shares how side projects became his biggest success story.

Mikael is the founder of Crew, a site that connects freelance designers and developers to projects, and Unsplash, a do-whatever-you-want photo sharing site boasting 6 million+ photo downloads per month.

Sponsor

Our first show is proudly supported by Invision. InVision is a design platform to prototype and collaborate with your team - we use it internally and it makes things effortless. If you’re not familiar with them, go to invisionapp.com and check it out.

Episode Highlights

###Interview

How Mikael used a psychology background to fuel his design career (1:40)

The philosophy behind Crew (4:00)

Why losing faith in himself pushed Mikael to develop his company (9:20)

“Is there a market for this? Is this a business? How do we make it sustainable?”- the first steps to building a business from an idea (11:10)

How and why Crew.co is unique from other freelance websites (12:30)

Crew’s utility-approach to marketing, and the best money Mikael ever spent (19:30)

'Quantity gets you to quality' and the the benefit of juggling multiple projects (25:00)

Letting go of perfection and changing perspective (27:20)

Mikael’s unique writing habits (30:00)

Job postings (34:30)

Top Stories (35:00)

Community Announcements

Our Job Board now supports development positions. We've also revamped the browsing experience with location, listing typeand job type toggles.

###Jobs

Slack is looking for a Product Design Manager in San Francisco

Intercom is hiring a Design Lead in Dublin

ThoughtSpot is looking for a Brand Designer and a Product Designer in Palo Alto

###Top Stories:
New Sketch Licensing Model: Sketch is moving to a new licensing model and will now charge for updates. If you purchased Sketch more than a year ago, you will receive six months of updates. If you purchased Sketch less than a year ago, you will receive one year of updates from the date of your purchase.

Dropbox - New Productivity Features: Dropbox has a few new productivity features. Designers will appreciate the ability to scan in documents by taking a picture and uploading it. Dropbox also now has MS Office co-authoring.

Ask DN: What side projects are you working on? Sam's favourite Projects: Devjojo by Tony Lea, PunBot by Pablo Stanley and Graphical Cooking by Johannes Ippen

Bookmarks are dead: Zeh Fernandes rethinks bookmarking by suggesting we use natural-language search to find what we're looking for.

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