An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Delivering Content Through a Subscription — Subscription platforms like Patreon have also opened up more income streams for influencers, allowing fans to support their favorite creator in exchange for exclusive content and additional perks. Big creators like The Try Guys use this with different tiers that bring huge value to their community, currently sitting at 3.9K patrons on Patreon.
As part of my series about “How Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matias Coloutzzo.
Matias Colotuzzo is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vexels, a graphic design company focused on merch, print-on-demand, and unique designs. Matias has overseen the considerable growth in Vexels, which started with seven teammates in 2016 to more than 100 employees today. He is constantly looking for new ways to combine technology with daily tasks while improving the web experience.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is your “backstory”? What brought you to this point in your career?
I started my journey as an entrepreneur at the very young age of 17. At that time, I had an interest in web development, with a more specific interest in viral actions and interactive web actions. So, I started doing this type of work for several major companies and organizations like L’Oréal, UNICEF, and the United Nations. Through that work, I continued to develop my skills.
Eventually, I decided to expand my skill set and started learning data information and analytics. I was the first person in Uruguay to become certified in Google Analytics. After becoming a bit of an expert in conversions, optimizations, and analytics, I also decided to learn 3D animation and did extensive work in this area.
After quite some time working in these digital spaces, developing a solid background of digital skills and making many meaningful connections in these industries, I ended up meeting my business partners at one of the entrepreneurial events I help organize. After a few years of working with them on various projects, we saw a need in the market for design content to help sell products online, so we launched Vexels in 2016.
Since then we have had the chance to develop some innovative products and worked with several truly inspiring creators to implement a very bright future for the company.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you in the course of your career?
When I first started working as an entrepreneur, one of my first clients was L’Oréal. I was to develop and produce presentation DVDs for the launch of new products for their professional line. We were contracted to do everything, including designing the DVD box and burning each of the 1,000 individual DVDs.
At the time, DVD burners were quite an expensive technology, so we were only able to afford one unit. We had completed everything for this project except the actual production of the discs, and with 10 days left until the delivery date, we realized we might have an issue, as the burner took 15 minutes to develop each DVD. After running calculations, we realized that we would have to be running the DVD burner 24 hours a day for the remaining 10 days.
This left me with only one option. I had to set an alarm to go off every 15 minutes, and for 10 days straight, night and day, I changed the disc every 15 minutes and hit the start button, until we had every one of those 1,000 discs ready to deliver on time.
And although I like to laugh at this story now, as a young entrepreneur on contract with a major client to deliver a top-tier product with a limited budget, this perfectly displays the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that is often needed in the business world and was a crucial learning lesson for me early in my career.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We are becoming a company that enables creators to make a living from their passion and that is something that we feel is powerful.
To work with creators that have this passion for communication and also have an audience but are not yet able to make a living wage is very motivating and inspiring for us. We love the fact that creators trust and choose Vexels to help them get paid for what they genuinely enjoy doing.
Now, with the expansion of Vexels, we expect to have thousands of people use our company to sustain their lives.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?
The challenge is to be very agile in your process but also understand what you are doing.
For instance, The Lean Startup was really important for me when that book was released. But something that I see quite often is that people really understand the concept of becoming a Lean Startup, but do not necessarily understand the problems and issues they are trying to solve.
So you can be agile, but you also need to have a great background. If your only mandate is to execute quickly, you will be unbalanced in your career. And if you’re only researching, only trying to modify and create the very best product, and not launching because you feel that the product is not perfect yet, you probably have a problem too.
I think every founder has to work hard on understanding problems and also executing solutions quickly. For me, that’s the key — to create a boundary between being a perfectionist and working fast because the world is going at a crazy velocity right now.
None of us can achieve success without a bit of help along the way. Is there a particular person who made a profound difference in your life to whom you are grateful? Can you share a story?
I don’t know if I can point to someone in particular, but I am fortunate to have a connection with the entrepreneur environment and create relationships that have become profound friendships.
Three of my closest friends have followed the same path of creating a company, and all of us started from almost the same point. Through these years and all of the challenges, having the support from my closest friends was something that made a huge difference.
In predicaments where you have to raise money, or you have human resource problems, or if you have to find ways to bring demand to your product, I always have my friends to reach out to for help.
We now meet every week and discuss a specific challenge we have all faced or will be facing, and we have problem-solving sessions where everyone gives each other advice.
So what are the most exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Right now, we are working on new tools based on AI to give our users a totally new experience.
The challenge here is to create tools while adhering to the three pillars of quality that we have always used at Vexels.
First and foremost, we need to ensure our products are of the highest quality.
The second pillar is ensuring our products provide the user with a safe environment to create their designs. When I say safe, it means that if you are not a developer with specialized skills, we want you to be able to use our tools and feel safe experimenting without the fear that you may break a layout or ruin a design that someone else on your team took the time to create.
And the third and final pillar is that our tools need to have the ability to create something truly unique. This is very important to our users, as they are creators with a unique brand and they require unique designs to establish and grow that brand.
So we are now developing many AI capabilities in our products and services that will ensure our users can rely on these three pillars of quality as they create with Vexels.
What are your “Top Five Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand”. (Please share a story or example for each.)
Once a creator builds enough following, traction is inevitable, and multiple ways of monetizing become achievable.
Here are my top 5 methods of monetizing your brand!
1) Generating Ad Revenue
On YouTube, for example, the main form of monetization is through ad revenue. Creators with millions of followers, like The Act Man, often break over 1M views per video, so he’s earning around the seven-figure mark.
2) Teaching Online Courses
Many influencers are known for their expertise on a given topic, and they’ve found that a great way to monetize is by offering their services through online programs and courses teaching their craft. Fitness influencers and home cooks are some of the most popular examples of this type of brand monetization.
3) Seeking Brand Deals
Influencers who have been around long enough and have established enough of a brand reputation in the market are more likely to strike deals with brands. Take Timothy Goodman, for example, a New York City-based artist who has grown significantly on social media over the years and has partnered up with brands like Sharpie and Uniqlo.
4) Selling Branded Merchandise
Designing and selling their brand of merchandise products has become a must for influencers with well-established brands. Take MrBeast or Dr. DisRespect, both of whom are well-known for promoting their distinctive clothing lines and have managed to turn this into a steady and significant stream of revenue. I expect this trend to grow and diversify for creators and influencers of any size, and at Vexels we’re gearing our efforts to fully support the creators’ merch process from design to fulfillment.
5) Delivering Content Through a Subscription
Subscription platforms like Patreon have also opened up more income streams for influencers, allowing fans to support their favorite creator in exchange for exclusive content and additional perks. Big creators like The Try Guys use this with different tiers that bring huge value to their community, currently sitting at 3.9K patrons on Patreon.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
From a personal perspective, helping early-stage entrepreneurs pass several points in their careers that I’ve already passed is something that I not only enjoy, but I also think has a lot of value in creating a technological hub here in Latin America that is educated and oriented in technology, which is a major goal of mine.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. 🙂
If I had the opportunity to choose someone to have a private breakfast with, I would probably choose any of the Airbnb founders, because I admire their capacity to lead some good practices in the e-commerce space, and their innovation in UX and design has been a guide for the entire industry for many years.
What is the best way our readers can follow your work online?
You can follow Vexels and the innovative work we are doing through our website or any of the social channels below.
Website: https://www.vexels.com/
Instagram: @vexelsgraphics
YouTube: Vexels
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matias-colotuzzo-2697886/?originalSubdomain=uy
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
Matias Colotuzzo of Vexels On Five Ways For Influencers To Monetize Their Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.