👋 Hello Kenny! What is your current situation? What are you working on?

My main focus is growing Delesign, however I also manage other small projects like Chinwag.

🎓 What is your background? Where did you study or how did you start?

I studied accounting and finance at Loyola Marymount University. I was supposed to be an accountant, however instead decided to pursue entrepreneurship with an online Instagram marketing business I started my senior year of college. The business reached around 800 paid users 2 years later and I was able to hire a team to take care of the day-to-day operations, leaving me with around 3 hours of monthly commitment. I sold this business in 2018.

Along my journey, I met a lot of really cool entrepreneurs, developers, and designers. I had sourced a small team of designers to help me with the various entrepreneurial projects I was always working on, and my entrepreneur friends were often complementing the designs they would see. They’d ask if they could borrow my designers, to which I jokingly replied that I would as soon as they were finished with my work. Jokingly, as there was always something I needed my design team to work on.

After selling the Instagram business in 2018, I suddenly had a lot less projects to occupy my design team. I remembered my entrepreneurial friends asking to borrow my designers and this became the start of Delesign. After a successful response within my own network, I decided to officially launch Delesign to the public.

🍹 What would you be doing if you never had to work again?

Throwing around a frisbee on a beach.

🌟 Who or what has positively influenced you the most in your life/work?

There have been so many people that have positively influenced me. One of the resources I’m most thankful for is Quora, which I started discovered around 10 years ago. Through Quora, I was able to absorb the wisdom of so many interesting people and most importantly, learned that I could make my own unconventional path towards life and my career.

😈 Do you have an opinion that you’re sure is true, but a majority of people would not agree with you - and if yes, what is it?

In 50 years, today’s popular sports will be nothing more than a niche interest.

I think sports are great, and I especially love playing and watching football (soccer), but I feel strongly that their dominance as entertainment is due primarily to the lack of other entertainment options. As one example, even just 20 years ago video games were extremely primitive compared to today’s standards and as such much less entertaining. It’s interesting to think of how much more immersive our entertainment options will look like in 50 years from now.

There are thousands of other entertainment options today, and they keep on evolving to become more entertaining. I feel confident that this will continue to the point where today’s top sports will become overshadowed by them - unless they are also able to evolve. But besides extravagant stadiums and better coverage, sports have not changed, and it’s unlikely to expect that they will see any changes to make them more entertaining than they are now.

⏰ Time for some elevator pitching! What is Delesign?

Delesign is an unlimited graphic design service. We complete all your design projects for you by providing you with a dedicated Delesign senior designer - all for a flat monthly rate. Send us your project through the client dashboard and we’ll have it completed within a day for simple projects.

We’ll complete all your design projects, including graphic design, website and app design mockups, video editing, 2D animation, branding, and more.

💡 Why did you start it? What motivated you?

I started Delesign because I sold my previous company and needed something to do. I found that there was demand for such a service, and thought I’d try my best to meet that demand through Delesign.

🌱 How did you attract your first users? How are you growing Delesign?

My first users were through my internal network. I then later publicly launched Delesign through Product Hunt, which resulted in many new users. Many of our new clients come from referrals, so we don’t spend too much on ads. However we have found success through Google and Facebook ads.

💰 What is your business model?

We provide our users with top quality design talent at a fraction of the price of a full time employee. We also save them from going through the trouble and work of finding and vetting designers themselves.

🛠 What are your current and next steps? How could we help you?

We’re currently working on two major updates:

1. Website development service (now in beta)
2. Automated system to match clients’ projects with the best Delesign designer for that project

For 2, we presently do this manually, however we now have a lot of data that will allow our system to make perfect matches automatically to ensure the client gets the best output based on their preferences. The more this system is utilized, the better it will become.

🥇 What is the achievement that you’re the most proud of?

I’m proud of growing the Delesign team to over 30 in around 1 year.

💩 What about your most epic mess-up?

I’ve definitely made a lot of mistakes, including wasted advertising spend, improper hires, and other issues related to my own inexperience. However they all resulted in growth and improvement, and I wouldn’t really classify any of them as epic mess-ups.

But the mistake that caused the most damage would definitely be me not delegating my responsibilities sooner. I spent the better half of a year performing all the sales and support myself, which took up a lot of time. While this can be helpful at first, as it allows to you better understand your customer’s needs and issues with your service, it can also be detrimental after a certain point as it takes up a lot of time that could be better spent on growing the business.

Fortunately I now have a very capable sales and support team who I am able to hand off this responsibility to, which allows me more time to grow Delesign.

🧙 Any magic trick to share with us? The one piece of advice that you would give?

Always look for ways to delegate your responsibilities or automate your tedious processes. Your time is extremely important and delegation is incredibly effective at providing you with more time.

🚀 Any other projects/side-projects you’ve been working on?

Yes! I have a lot of side projects that keep me busy.

• I’m working on Chinwag, a widget to help people better engage with their website visitors.

• I have a soon-to-be launching party card game, Oh Sheep.

• I have an iOS app coming soon (now in beta) to help users quickly gain the knowledge of bestselling books through short audio summaries Book Club.

• Still in the idea stage, but I’m hoping to build an app to help realtors better close sales through video.

• Not a startup, but I have an investment property in Huntsville, Alabama and was planning on doing more real estate investments until COVID-19 happened. I like the idea of passive investments/businesses, and my goal for all my businesses is for them to be able to effectively run without any personal involvement.