We were lucky to catch up with Nick Silverio recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

We needed to pivot. We spent a year ideating, branding, and building a “LinkedIn for Artists” product that was in-market, with a small but mighty user base and pretty low engagement. Artswrk was great in theory, but once you joined there was very little to do and little to gain. Ramita, my co-founder, pushed us to do user testing and figure out what was the one key value-add we could bring to freelance artists who needed flexible work and income. The answer was – you guessed it – flexible work and income.

Currently, hiring someone like a dance educator or videographer is a mess. You post on Facebook and Instagram, hope someone shares it or sends a word-of-mouth recommendation, and if you’re lucky, you can book someone (who doesn’t cancel). Then, as the artist, you probably get paid with an envelope full of cash and no W-9 form to track for taxes. We discovered there is virtually no technology to support hiring of service-based freelance artists, and thus our “Artist Marketplace” idea was born.

However, building a two-sided marketplace is one of the trickiest plays in the startup book, as we were warned by many. Our advisor, Payal Kadakia, who built one of the world’s most successful marketplaces (ClassPass), pushed us to just do it. We had to get scrappy and rip off the bandaid. We joined all of the dance studio Facebook groups, and in October 2021, we finally made a match. A studio in Armonk, NY, posted that they needed a modern sub that evening, and one of our early users from the old product was available. We messaged, we emailed, we quickly threw together a payment link in Stripe, and we BOOKED AN ARTIST! I’ll never forget that it was a $170 booking, and we made our first $7.50 in commission.

Looking back, we basically knew nothing. We knew the problem but didn’t know how to solve it, or even if people would be open to our solution in such an archaic industry that has lacked proper tech for decades. We built based on trust, set up processes, improved conversion, and grew our user base, but it really all started with that first substitute teacher in October.

Nick, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an NYC-based dancer, choreographer, and co-founder of Artswrk, building the future of work for freelance artists. I trained in dance, voice, and acting for 15 years, then graduated the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a B.S. in Economics and a concentration in Commercial Dance Management. Post-grad, I have been lucky to work as a performer on the North American tour of Frozen the Broadway Musical, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Saturday Night Live, Westworld, America’s Got Talent, and more. And as a working performer, I experience first-hand what we call “the artist roller coaster.”

No matter how successful you become as an artist, there will always be down periods with no work and no income. Artswrk was built to provide flexible work and income to the millions of multi-talented freelance artists, and to solve the fragmentation gap for small-to-medium businesses and individuals who have an urgent and recurring need to hire artists.

Artswrk offers a marketplace product where clients can discover, book, and pay artists in one seamless flow. Our go-to-market demographics are dance educators, dance judges, photographers, and videographers. Gone are the days of desperately searching for someone on Instagram: instead, post a request, receive submissions from available and qualified artists in minutes, and select the best one for your opportunity.

We have generated hundreds of thousands in flexible income to artists in the NY, NJ, and CT region, and are excited for our upcoming expansion to the West Coast!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my co-founder Ramita Ravi on the very first day of college back in 2013. We were both attending the University of Pennsylvania in non-arts programs, mostly because we did not think we could realistically pursue dance careers, but also because we have a variety of interests and wanted to explore those avenues. However, we both needed to dance in college and auditioned for Arts House Dance Company, a student-run pre-professional company that produces two shows per year. In fact, Arts House was one of the main reasons I chose Penn: I knew I wanted a business education while still training at the highest level possible.

Rami and I both got in to Arts House, and for four years were inseparable. We ran the Board together as Chair and Artistic Director, I took over her role as the Dance Arts Council Chair on the Penn Performing Arts Council Executive Board, and we created countless works together as dance partners.

We have built a decade of trust (literally, I throw her over my head), and working on Artswrk with her is undoubtedly the best part of this experience. We balance each other out, we support when the other is down, and we lift each other up as much as possible!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Building a business – building anything – means you almost certainly encounter a decent amount of rejection. Whether it’s from investors, potential clients, or potential hires, you are not going to be the right fit for a lot of people. I think rejection is one of the reasons that so many people aren’t able to push through the tough times. It’s really invalidating and it can affect your self-worth.

As a dancer in the most competitive city in the world, I genuinely get told “no” almost every day. I would say I have booked 2 or 3 out of every 100 jobs I’ve auditioned for. I have been rejected for my height, my look, my voice, my biceps, my hair, my general disposition – you name it, I’ve been told that I am not good enough for a project.

Being able to process rejection in a sustainable, healthy way has been a big secret to my resilience so far as a founder. I try to think of it as objectively as possible: it’s not that I am not worthy, it’s just that someone has created more value in this specific instance. And when I create the most value, I get the job. Similarly, when my business creates the most value for someone, I get the sale or the investment. Remove yourself from the equation and know that you simply have to hear “no” in order to appreciate the “yes.”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.artswrk.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/nicksilverioo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicksilverio/
• Other: TikTok: @nicksilverioo

Image Credits
Raashi Desai