How Two Guys Who “Know Photoshop” Built (and Sold) Working Not Working

Justin Gignac and Adam Tompkins built a company to smile about. Image c/o Working Not Working.

Look no further than Working Not Working to see it’s time to throw away the “starving artist” trope. This curated community of the best creative talent is where Apple, Netflix, Airbnb, COLLINS, Wieden+Kennedy, The New York Times and more go to find...the best creative talent around!

Over the past 10 years, co-founders Justin Gignac and Adam Tompkins have grown Working Not Working (WNW) from a personal project to help them better source their own work, to an acquisition. This year, Fiverr acquired the company and set it on a path to expand its talent territory from New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco to the entire world. It reflects how companies hire more and more people from anywhere.

Here, Gignac and Tompkins share how they built their company, what makes a successful partnership, and the skill they believe is critical for the future of creative work.

Filmmaker, photographer, and WNW member Ahmed Klink at work. Image: Working Not Working

You two were once colleagues. How did that evolve into a new business?

Tompkins: We were both art directors at our first job at Ogilvy in 2002 and worked in the same group. Then we both left, ultimately had these separate freelance careers, and remained friends. In 2008, things started to change where there were more screens than ever and agencies had a need for a certain type of person: There are two kinds of freelancers, the kind you hire to do what your staff doesn’t want to do and the kind you hire because your staff doesn’t have that expertise.

Gignac: When I left the full-time job at the agency, I freelanced and I quickly realized it was super inefficient. Every time I needed a gig, nobody would ever have a job for me and then two weeks later, I’d finally get booked and then I also got five offers for other gigs that week. So on my portfolio site I made a giant blinking neon sign like a motel “Vacancy” sign that said “Justin's available or will be soon.” I quickly ended up with 40 recruiters following me and every time I put my status to “Available” I got two or three job offers a day. Any jobs I couldn't take, I emailed to art director friends. They thought it was so cool. There was plenty of work to go around and I wanted to make sure my friends got booked. So I became a rep for my friends.

At the time Adam and I were talking and both agreed that the blinking “Vacancy” sign that worked for us could work for everybody. We quickly put together some crude wireframes, found a design and development studio in Brooklyn and hired them to create the first version of “Working Not Working.” I don't think we expected how quickly it would take off. You had to be referred by a current member and then approved by us. It was an inefficient, painstaking process because we only approved about 15% of the people that have applied.

But we needed to because we knew our agency customers and their expectations, and we wanted to make sure that that talent level was high. Within a couple of years we had about 2,500 creatives. Adam and I did everything for the first three years, while also freelancing. A lot of times people would hit us up and think that we're a massive company. They’d ask if they could speak to our manager if they didn’t get a response to an email in a day. And we’d say, sorry, it’s just us and we’re on a freelance gig right now.

How did it grow from the first wave to a venture-backed company?

Gignac: After three years, we ended up raising an angel round almost by accident—David Droga and Airbnb founder Joe Gebbia asked to invest. We grew the talent base to 7,500 creatives and, in 2017, relaunched it to allow anybody who wanted to to make a profile to create one. That allowed us to get over 100,000 creatives, where we are today.

The site highlights when the best creators around are available for work. Image: Working Not Working

What entrepreneurial lessons did you learn on the fly?

Tompkins: Creative people are the best possible entrepreneurs because we get paid to come up with 100 ideas for any company, every week. Then 98% to 100% die every week. Then the following week, you do the same thing for a completely different category. We’re used to figuring out ways to solve problems, and then quickly discard them.

Both of us learned there are two competing philosophies, one of which is, Don't let good be the enemy of great. Work until the last possible second and don't let it out the door until it's absolutely perfect. That goes wholly against product design, which is, Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Because when you're building a product, it's all about getting it out there so people look at it, test it and then you can modify it slowly over the course of a year. The first philosophy holds people back from going from the creative world to the entrepreneur world because everything has to be so perfect.

What did you two see in the other as creative partners?

Gignac: We're two art directors and creative directors. Usually when you find a partner you find someone with complimentary skills, but we always described our business sense as “two guys who know Photoshop.” We tackle things differently. I'm more on the product side and Adam is more on the marketing side. He keeps us thinking higher-level and pulls me out of the weeds when necessary.

Tompkins: I think it is more important to have slightly more similarities than you do differences. It’s good to have differences, but when you're starting a company together, especially if you're bootstrapping, you have to be able to fight and then go to your corners and come back.

Illustrator, designer, podcaster, and WNW member Allison Filice colorfully explores her inner and outer worlds. Image: Working Not Working

What led to the acquisition with Fiverr?

Gignac: A couple of years ago we were doing pretty good, looking to pick up more autonomy, and were starting to buy out our investors. But over the past three years, we had a couple of coffees with one of the merger and acquisition people over at Fiverr. We thought, Let’s meet with them, see what happens.

Tompkins: We both launched around the same time, and they are a big venture-backed company that was kind of the same thing that we're doing. And we came from a much smaller part of the New York advertising and marketing world. When Justin said we blew up earlier, it's like we blew up from like 300 people on the site to 1,000 people on the site.

When we started buying out our investors, it hit us that if we're going to do venture funding and try to be big, we’re going to have to change the way the company works. We didn’t want to do that, which led us to June of 2020 when we're mid-pandemic and the phone rings.

Gignac: Marketing spends pulled back and we had a drop in revenue. We got a call and we started the conversations with Fiverr and learned a lot more. Our initial impressions were that everyone on there was getting paid five bucks when actually some people posted jobs for $20,000 and more. Fiverr was actively pushing people to make more money.

As a company, our mission is to eliminate the obstacles between creative people and opportunity. That’s getting people jobs and finding the right talent. One of the obstacles we realized was our own ability to scale. We were never more than a dozen or so employees.

In the conversations with Fiverr, we saw how we could benefit from their marketing and SEO expertise and their technology and really deliver for our community.

Tompkins: We had a heart-to-heart at one point because thinking of selling your company is an emotional experience. We thought that if we continued on our own, we would keep incrementally chugging along. Or we could sell. That’s hard because it means you have to admit you need help. That was keeping us up at night.

Gignac: The creative industry is becoming more global and remote, and it's going to happen with or without us. We wanted to make sure that we had a voice in the conversation.

You recently surveyed your community about where the industry is headed. What skill is most important to creative work in the future?

Gignac: One of the biggest skills people can have is adaptability. No matter what comes along, if you're adaptable and curious, you're going to be able to survive. One of our three core values as a company is “fight the robots.” When the machines rule our humanity and creativity will be the only weapon we have, wield it ferociously. We’re not worried about robots taking our jobs because they don't know what it's like to be human, to be insecure, to feel confident. We need to embrace our ability to connect to each other as humans.

If you’d like to read more from The Creative Factor—such as Morten Bonde’s story about reinventing himself as a LEGO Art Director while losing his sight or Edése Doret: Inside the Mind-Boggling World of Private Jet Design—sign up for our newsletter.