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Russ Perry

Founder & CEO, Design Pickle · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveauthor@russperry ↗LinkedIn ↗designpickle.com ↗

Russ Perry founded Design Pickle in 2015, pioneering the productized, flat-rate subscription workforce model for graphic design and creative services. He scaled the company from a bootstrapped startup into a multi-million-dollar global business and authored the book The Sober Entrepreneur.

16statements → 13claims → 0claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential → 37said about them ↓

13 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 12 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 13 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Russ argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Russ Perry on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Russ Perry said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle pays offshore talent double the local average wage
“Our teams are in markets. I call them emerging markets where they are, you know, on average making three to four dollars an hour if they want to get a job where we'll start at six to seven dollars an hour. So we're three X-ing their take home, still fractional…”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 6:42 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Opinion
Perry: Creatives cannot make a viable living on Fiverr or 99designs
“You can't make a living working on a marketplace. Like, you can't make a living cobbling together jobs off Fiverr or 99 designs, and that's where a lot of those companies get their teams from, their labor.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 7:30 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Disclosure
Perry: Fiverr casually explored acquiring Design Pickle for $20M in 2019
“The first round was two or three million. The second round was twenty million. And then I said no to both... There weren't any term sheets. These were casual conversations.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 22:05 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: 100% of Design Pickle's 470 employees are outside the US
“470.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 7:11 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Insight
Perry: Moat comes from managing complex workflows at scale, not labor arbitrage
“That's the boat. It's managing that, not just finding some cheaper designers compared to US and reselling their time.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 10:29 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle maintains roughly 50% retention in first year
“So of the first year year zero through, or month zero through 12, it's gonna be Around 50%.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 14:26 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle gross margins range from low 60s to 68%
“Our gross margin is on a good month you know, 68% on a, when we start to grow and we're adding middle management, it gets down to low sixties.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 6:28 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle has 3,300 active customer subscriptions
“Actively, we have 3300 subscriptions, so that could, a customer could have multiple subscriptions depending on how much of our service they want.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 8:37 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle handles 12,000 unique requests weekly
“Like, we'll do, you know, 12,000 requests this week, individual unique requests.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 10:18 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle's ARPU is roughly $512 per month
“I mean, our ARPU is, is like 512 dollars.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 11:30 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle scaled to $10M annual revenue in four years
“We did 300,000 our first year. You want to just go through all the years? 300,000 1.4, 4.2, 10.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 13:42 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle will conservatively hit $14M revenue in 2020
“We rounded down, conservatively, we'll be doing fourteen million.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 14:00 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle LTV tops $4,000 with $600-$700 CAC
“Our LTV is, you know, well over 4000 dollars and our CAC is anywhere from six to 700 dollars. So we can return on a client in two to three months as long as we have the cash available.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 17:27 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Prior creative agency hit $3M revenue with eight clients maximum
“We did around three million at our best year, but we were doing high ticket items. I'm talking half a million dollar branding projects, quarter million dollar trade show events. So one and done huge monster projects. I never had more than eight clients at a ti…”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 3:29 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle's core competency is operational systems, not award-winning design
“We're not winning any off, you know, Madison Avenue awards here.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 9:54 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Perry: Design Pickle operates at $10M scale with just five engineers
“We have five engineers now.”
Russ Perry Jun 1, 2020 ▶ 16:21 DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done

The other half of the tape: Russ Perry's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 37 times in 9 episodes on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 37

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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048202020212022episodes it came up in
002.5458202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 5 mentions in 1 episode
2020 32 mentions in 8 episodes 4 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
DesignPickle: Bootstrapped, $10m Revenue, Helping 3,000 Brands Get Design Work Done Jun 1, 2020 13m
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