Collis Ta’eed founded a little company called Envato back in 2006, and three years later it has flourished into a corporation with 18 extremely successful subsidiaries that employ writers and designers from all over the world. Its diversity ranges from tutorial blogs covering almost every topic in the design world, to successful marketplaces that provide you with all the design materials you will ever need.
With the entrepreneurial genius of Collis and assistance from his talented staff, they have turned Envato into a giant in the world of design that acquires at least 11 million hits a month across it’s network of sites. Now pose those burning questions you have always wanted to ask Collis today!
Pose Your Questions in the Comments
In the near future, I will be interviewing Collis. We want to make it as informative to our readers as possible, this is why we want you (the reader) to post a question for Collis in the comments below.
For those of you not familiar with Collis, he started Psdtuts+ and the Tuts+ network, has a tremendous amount of blogging, design, web design, and business building knowledge. He is the CEO of Envato. So this will be a great interview!
About the Coming Interview
Since our last interview with our editor Sean was so successful, we figured that the next step should be to interview the creator of Envato Collis Ta’eed. The procedure will be exactly the same as the previous interview only the questions will now be directed towards Collis now.
Feel free to ask any type of questions ranging from the business end of the company, to design, or anything large or small that you would like to know about Collis. It’s time to pick his brain a bit!
We want this interview to be successful, so we once again need your help. Post your questions in the comments. I’ll then go through and pick out some questions that will make this interview interesting as well as informative.
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I asked Sean, so I’ll have to ask you as well-
What would you do in the event of a zombie apocalypse? :)
that would never happen
Never say never!
LOL! Funny question!
Great Question :D
I’d get the shotgun out and my buddies. Blast the sterio and we would be playing L4D IN REAL LIFE!!
L4D IRL!
Here’s an interesting one in most cases:
If not web design and the online media niche, what other type of business would you have liked to start?
cool question Zach…. ;)
I think the answer is, he write some codes in any of the software companies…..
I backup Zach’s question
hello Collis Ta’eed, what are ypur growth predictions fro the next 2 years with envato and do you have an online folio for us to see , Ben
Excelente Entrevista, es una persona a seguir Collis.
Saludos!
Where did you go to college? Do you have a degree for the fields you work in?
I recently went to the Art Institute for a week to see what it was about… and I found out that it was rated with a D, and that you cannot receive a real education there. I’ve always thought places like that was where people like you went to school, but I believe I was wrong. People would rather hire those who come from a state college. Is this what you believe?
i second this question
i second that question as well..
Oh my, I’ll think about a question… just a sec!
My question for Collis is:
When you started PSDtuts, how did you get the site to its visitors? Did you do any kind of special promotion?
I ask this, because PSDtuts is the site Envato is built on, it was its first site and therefore a start of a huge network of websites to be loved
I thought flashden was the first site? It was in beta in 2006 i think, and then psdtuts came out in 2007, although don’t quote me on that :p
http://web.archive.org/web/20071021230246/http://www.psdtuts.com/
The sites changed a bit though :p
That’s correct, FlashDen was the first Envato site. Psdtuts+ was the first Tuts+ site though, so he’s not totally wrong either :)
You can read everything concerning that question here, as you can see in the article Envato was sterted around FreelanceSwitch.
http://northxeast.com/blogging/how-we-took-a-blog-from-0-to-500-subscribers-in-just-7-days/
good question second it how do you advertise /seo
Yes, it shouldve been tuts+ sites, because I thought the tuts+ sites were the thing envato is most popular of (maybe the marketplaces as well)
Yes, sorry, should have been first tuts+ site. I also think this is is one of the reasons why envato got so famous around the niche (maybe flashden as well)
Will you be interviewing yourself?
Did you have invested much of your own money into Envato or is the money only coming from the sites themselves?
What would you do if your site crashed? Dumb question I know but couldn’t think of anything else. =P
How you can be successfull on the web?
whats your drive(to get out bed in the morning)?
how is your insparation?
My questions is,
How did you market/advertise the tuts+ network when it was first getting started, how much time per week would you spend working on the sites? How did you get the sponsers that you have ect.
do you ever got a project that you just did not wanted to do?
I’d like to know if he still does the design for all his sites himself!
Cheers
Chris
What inspired you to start the envato network?
Secondly, what gave you the drive to continue it?
Specialist or jack of all trades?
wait i had lots to ask….
Collis keep ready….
Tomorrow i think several ques and come back….
Are you planning on starting another bussiness in possibly a new market (to enlarge the current porfolio of about 15 websites)
I’d ask Collis:
How do you find quality people, you never see their faces and yet do a great job with editorials and whatnot?
Please detaliate how you pick the guys, I’m curious and definitely intersted in working with Envato in the near future.
If you wasn’t running these site’s. What would you be doing.
How Many Tutorial Submissions do you get for each site each week? Who does the deciding for AudioTuts?
“On Vectortuts+ it’s probably about 10 and on Psdtuts+ it’s probably about 40, but this does vary from week to week.”
It was in seans interview last time,
what was your first venture online ?
Oh, I thought in one question!
Hey Collis, was to open a little company a dream you always had or it was just an opportunity that came and you grabbed it?
sorry if I typed something wrong!
What took you so long? :)
I’m a high-school student who dreams of a small, focused startup for creatives, sorta like Envato but with different aims and never really desiring the size of Envato, so most questions will be accordingly.
Ok, here goes:
1. Can you explain the heirarchy witin Envato, if you are comfortable with it?
2. Did you read up and talk to people for typical business knowledge when beginning Envato, or was it just a weekend project that you did when you had loads of time and nothing creative to do?
3. What’s the biggest failure you’ve had (relatively, at least :P ) in: individual decisions, marketing decisions and starting blogs (one each, please?)
4. What was your strategy in marketing some of the less mass-oriented sites in the TUTS network? Just cross promotion from the larger sites like PSDTUTS?
5. What would be the top 5 skills for someone to work online full time?
6. On a scale of 10, how would you rate the following: SEO, social media promotion (Digg/SU etc.), word of mouth marketing (ie. thanks to the excellent tutorials and such)?
7. What sort of server infrastructure does TUTS network, Creattica and the marketplaces use? There must be a lot of resource demands, just asking so that it’d be handy if my dream startup becomes a reality and requires that sort of scaling :)
8. Can you tell a little about your co-workers at Envato (except the four you mentioned in a Netsetter post)? The editors, server management guys, coders and programmers (especially those Rails ninjas who work behind the marketplaces) etc. ?
9. Finally, how long after starting up did it take for you to bring Envato as a whole, into profit?
I apologize if any of my questions are hard to understand and/or poorly worded, I’m not a native English speaker…
Dude, Awesome Set of Questions!
1. As a computer Engineer you starts a photoshop tutorial site first, why? What made u inspire in to photoshop and graphics designs??
2. Who encourage you most to open up psdtuts?
3. Who taught you design? [ur self-taught or u study any course or any person]
4. Whenever you switch on computer and fire up browser, which is ur first website comes to mind and you open??
5. your one of the recent dream? ;)
6. which envato site you open first?
7. Who impress you for the french beard? :)
8. Your first crush?
9. i think u crack jokes often [I see [like] it moreover in all of ur comments], so share a joke u most loved?
10. How you choose the editors, co-workers and other employees of Envato???
Stay tuned…. for more… hehehe :)
How long did it take for envato to start seeing its way as a success. and in the interim of this period what did you do or what inspired you to keep faith in the success of your company?
As an experienced entrepreneur, what advice would you give to new and up and coming entrepreneurs on planning and execution of business plans and gearing of the mind to think within the limits of their resources?
Where do you see Envato in a few years, at the same place with more hits, tutorials and resources – or expanded to new places that it currently hasn’t entered?
Cheers,
Dan
How do you make money with this? Advertising?
what are your plans for the future of envato, and for your future in the Design world ?
1) Do you cross your fingers when visiting the Envato sites, hoping that none of it has fallen over, and you’ll have to deal with that horrible gut feeling, and quickly fix something that lots of people use?
2) How long does it take you to get the re-design itch, once you’ve launched a new site? I want to re-build things about a week after launch…
Time management, how do you set priorities, how many on the team for brainstorming?
Did you ever doubt yourself?
How much pesos did you have to invest to start of?
Who do you host with?
Hi Collis! I am going to start my own webdesiging freelancing buissnies, what is your absoulute best tips for me, and others who are in this position?
Thank you!
My questions for you Collis:
How do you define success? by web traffic data? by google page rank? What are your merits for success?
How many hours a day and how many days a week do you work? Do you ever take holidays?
How do you shut down your work pressure while you are not working?
Thanks.
How did you think of the idea of Tutsplus?
Hey there Collis
I was just curious as how you met the different people on your team and how you grew the sort of camaraderie needed to build envato? Were they friends, coworkers, random acquaintances?
I really appreciate all you’ve done with envato. I stumbled upon it around when psdtuts first went up (with the brown background and light text ;] ) and it’s helped me tremendously over the past 2-3 years. Thanks a million and I only hope that you become even more successful as the years go on!
I have plans to take the big step in less than two years to become self-employed. I am married and will be starting a family soon, and my biggest concern is providing for my family. I believe that I have the talent, but with this economy, it makes me a little worried. How long did it take you to become financially stable with your sites and did you have to have other part time jobs until then?
Here comes an irrelevant question.
Mr. Ta’eed where are you originally from? Iran? I am just guessing from you last name, any how, many people in Iran including me are inspired by what you have done, could you please do something about people like us who have no credit card in order to have a plus account?
I have already suggested Jeff writing tutorials to compensate for the account fee, but still nothing has been done.
thanks for the time
collis is from Australia…..
Next credit card part should answer by him…… ;)
Caz me too have the same doubt…… :)
Are you happy with what you’re doing now? Or do you think you will pursue another project in the future away from Envato in pursuit of something more? I understand you’re still fairly young so you have it in you to begin another project and leave Envato and the family of sites under control of someone else (with you still as a founder).
If you could give one piece of advice to a young, budding entrepreneur who wants to start something successful on the web, what would you say?
If you could describe yourself with one word, what would it be?
What is/are your favorite band(s)?
Thanks!
At what age did you start to look into designing?
Just a quick one from an ignorant English reader, but I’ve always wanted to know; How do you pronounce your awesome surname? :-)
Thanks, and keep up the fantastic Envato network!
Who’s your favourite Spice Girl?
What advice do you have for Designers and Developers who want to move from client work to personal projects. And maybe how to make it profitable.
Explain you policy of freezing a person’s account until he/she drops a dispute about a purchase of an Envato? Isn’t this a form of blackmail?
How much money the MarketPlace’s and the TUTS Sites gain monthly? (With publicity included)
Please ask him this question:
If there was no Internet where do you think you would be today?
@Collis: If you get a opportunity to start all over again, would you take the same route or would you change certain things or do certain things in a different way that could make you more successful than currently you are? What would it be?
How much of your decisions are based on pure logic and how much of them are based on intuitions or gut feelings?
oh .come back….
at flashden if some1 sold copywrited items why did u steal his money and not gave them to the buyers who paid for it but keep them all for yourself?
what is the driving force behind you and what would you advice a starter on choosing the correct media for a business???
are you going to have internship job opening for the coming year ? =)