How This Designer-Turned-CEO Bootstrapped His Business to $20M ARR

When Shawn Rubel launched Vecteezy in 2007, it was just a side project with a few hundred dollars behind it and a simple mission to help designers find high-quality creative resources. Today, that project has grown into a global platform serving over 20 million users each month, offering more than 60 million vectors, stock photos, and videos.

In this interview, Shawn shares how he bootstrapped Vecteezy from a solo effort into a $20 million/year business with a team of over 50 people across four continents. He opens up about the strategies that fueled the company’s growth, the biggest challenges he faced along the way, and the lessons any entrepreneur or creative can take from his journey.

Tell us about yourself and your business.

I’m Shawn Rubel, founder and CEO of Vecteezy, a creative marketplace that’s become a go-to resource for designers, marketers, and creatives worldwide. I studied graphic design at Niagara College and earned my BA in Visual Arts from Brock University. After working as a graphic designer, I discovered there was a massive gap in the market for accessible, high-quality creative resources.

Vecteezy launched in 2007 as a platform offering free vector graphics, and we’ve since expanded into a comprehensive creative marketplace with over 60 million files, including vectors, stock photos, and 4K videos. We currently serve over 20 million users each month. 

We’re headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, with a team of over 50 people working across four continents. 

How does your business make money?

Our revenue model has evolved over the years. Initially, I relied entirely on advertising revenue and affiliate marketing while keeping all content completely free for users. 

In 2010, three years after launch, I introduced Vecteezy Pro, which marked our transition to a freemium model. We didn’t eliminate the free content (we still add new free resources daily), but we began offering premium, exclusive content through subscriptions and download credits. 

Today, we make money from Pro subscriptions, ads that are shown to free users, and partnerships.

The freemium approach allows users to experience the quality and value of our platform before making any financial commitment. Most of our paying customers originally came to us for the free content and upgraded once they saw the value we provide.

What was your inspiration for starting the business?

The inspiration came directly from my own pain points as a graphic designer. I was constantly struggling to find quality creative resources that fit within tight project budgets. 

What frustrated me most was that quality free resources did exist, but they were scattered across dozens of different websites. I’d spend hours hunting through various platforms. There was no centralized location where I could reliably find professional-quality free vectors, photos, or graphics.

At the same time, I was networking with other designers and creators who were contributing to existing stock platforms but weren’t receiving fair compensation for their work. The disconnect was obvious. Designers needed affordable resources, and creators needed better ways to monetize their talents.

My first site Brusheezy.com, focused specifically on free Photoshop brushes. The response was immediate and overwhelming, which validated that other people really cared about this too. Brusheezy’s success naturally led me to create Vecteezy, focusing on vector graphics.

The inspiration wasn’t about building a massive business initially. I wanted to create the resource I wished existed for myself as a designer. The fact that it resonated with millions of other creatives worldwide and grew into a global platform has been incredibly rewarding, but it all started with that simple desire to make designers’ lives easier.

How and when did you launch the business?

I launched Vecteezy in 2007, three years after I relocated from Ontario, Canada to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and started working in internet marketing. The launch was relatively simple. I invested just a few hundred dollars to get the website up and running. The focus was on creating a clean, user-friendly interface where designers could easily search for and download vector graphics. I started by curating and uploading quality free vectors that I found scattered across the internet, essentially solving the problem I had experienced myself.

What surprised me was how quickly the site gained traction. It was profitable within the first month or two, thanks to advertising revenue from attracting thousands of visitors daily. The growth was almost entirely organic. People shared links on social media and recommended the site to colleagues. 

I handled everything myself initially, including content curation, website maintenance, customer service, everything. This gave me deep insight into every aspect of the business, though it also limited how quickly I could scale. 

The launch strategy was really about providing immediate value. Instead of trying to build a perfect platform with every possible feature, I focused on solving one core problem really well: giving designers a reliable place to find quality free vectors. 

How is the business funded?

Vecteezy has been entirely bootstrapped from day one. We’ve never taken outside investment or venture capital funding. This approach has given us tremendous freedom to make decisions based on what’s best for our users and contributors rather than external investor pressure.

What was your first year in business like?

The first year was a whirlwind. I was doing everything myself. It was a constant learning experience since I was figuring out how to run an online business while also trying to serve a growing user base.

The feedback from users was incredibly positive, which validated that Vecteezy was solving a real problem. Designers were not only downloading resources but also reaching out to thank me for creating the platform and to suggest additional features or content categories.

Looking back, that first year established the foundation for everything that followed. The positive user response gave me confidence that this could become something much bigger than a side project, and the early profitability showed that the business model was viable. It set the stage for my decision to leave my job and go full-time with the business in 2009.

What strategies did you use to grow the business?

Our growth strategy has always centered around providing exceptional value first and letting that drive organic growth. In the early years, word-of-mouth and social sharing were our primary growth engines. Designers would discover our resources, use them in their projects, and then recommend Vecteezy to colleagues and friends. 

Content quality and curation have also been fundamental to our growth strategy. Rather than just accepting any content, we maintain high standards for what gets published on our platform. Users keep coming back because they trust they’ll find professional-quality resources.

Building a strong contributor community has been crucial for scaling our content library. We focus on making contributors’ lives as easy as possible and giving them the best opportunities to succeed. 

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

The biggest challenge was learning to delegate and build accountability systems within our team. Handling everything myself worked when the business was small but became a serious limitation as we grew. When I started hiring, I initially relied heavily on freelancers for critical functions, which backfired.

At one point, key parts of our website infrastructure were managed by freelancers who didn’t really have skin in the game. When problems arose, I couldn’t reach them, and critical site functions were failing. I was essentially locked out of fixing problems with my own platform because I had outsourced too much responsibility to people who weren’t truly invested in the business.

This crisis forced me to completely rethink how we approached team building and accountability. I realized that for essential business functions, we needed full-time employees who were genuinely committed to Vecteezy’s success. Building that team and establishing clear chains of responsibility took time, but it made a huge difference for the business.

Learning to let go of control was personally challenging for me. When you start a business and handle every detail yourself, it’s hard to trust others with responsibilities that feel critical to your success. But I had to learn that my involvement in every decision was actually holding us back from reaching our potential.

The transition required developing new management and leadership skills that I didn’t necessarily have as a solo entrepreneur. Learning to communicate vision, set clear expectations, provide feedback, and build a collaborative culture were all new challenges that I had to work through.

Once we had a stable, accountable team in place, our growth accelerated dramatically. We could tackle more ambitious projects, improve our platform faster, and provide better service to our users.

What have been the most significant keys to Vecteezy’s success?

The most significant key has been our focus on user value. From day one, we’ve made decisions based on what’s best for our users rather than what might generate the most immediate revenue. This long-term thinking has built incredible loyalty and trust within our community. 

The freemium business model has been fundamental to our success. By providing millions of free resources, we remove barriers to entry and allow users to experience what we have to offer without risk. This builds trust and often leads to premium subscriptions once users see the quality and depth of what we offer. It’s a model that benefits everyone. Users get immediate value, we build a large audience, and many users eventually upgrade to paid subscriptions.

Finally, building a strong, diverse team with people who genuinely care about our mission has been essential. When you have passionate people working toward a shared vision, it shows in every aspect of the business.

Tell us about your team.

We’ve grown from just me working alone to over 50 people spread across four continents, and every addition has made us stronger and more capable of serving our global community.

What I love most about our team is the diversity of backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. We have people working from our headquarters in Bowling Green, Kentucky, as well as team members in various locations around the world. 

One thing that sets our team apart is that many of our people have creative backgrounds themselves. They understand the challenges our users face because they’ve experienced them personally. This empathy shows up in how we design features, curate content, and interact with our community.

We’ve also invested heavily in building internal tools and systems that help our team work more efficiently. For example, we’ve developed sophisticated content moderation tools that help our review team handle the increasing volume of submissions, especially AI-generated content, while maintaining our quality standards.

How did you make the transition from side hustle to full-time?

For the first couple of years after launching Vecteezy in 2007, I was still working my full-time job in internet marketing while building the platform on nights and weekends. 

By 2009, several factors aligned that made the transition feel both necessary and possible. First, the site’s traffic and revenue had grown to a point where it was demanding more time and attention than I could give while maintaining my day job. 

Second, I could see the potential for much greater growth if I could dedicate my full attention to the business. 

I had also started planning for the premium content model that would eventually become Vecteezy Pro, which I knew could significantly increase revenue.

February 2009 was when I finally made the decision to leave my job and pursue Vecteezy full-time. Within a few months, it was clear that going full-time had been the right decision.

Looking back, I probably could have made the transition sooner if I’d been less risk-averse. But the gradual approach also meant that when I did go full-time, the business was already on solid footing with proven demand.