Ep204 – George Hartley (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Bluethumb) on lessons from building a $100M art marketplace

My guest for Ep204 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was George Hartley.

George is the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Bluethumb, Australia’s largest art marketplace.

Since its launch in 2012, Bluethumb has grown into the leading art marketplace platform, connecting over 23,000 artists with buyers and selling more than $100 million worth of artwork.

In addition to Bluethumb, George was also the Co-founder and CEO of SmartrMail, an email marketing platform designed to help e-commerce businesses delight their customers and boost sales. SmartrMail’s success led to its acquisition by Relay Commerce in 2022, delivering a 5x return to its seed investors.

In this episode, George shares insights into:

• Why Bluethumb waited three years to raise their seed round and why they’ve stayed bootstrapped since
• The importance of continuously taking risks and experimenting to drive growth
• The unique challenges and strategies for scaling consumer marketplaces versus SaaS companies

Timestamps:

• 1:49 George’s background
• 7:30 His journey from music to tech
• 11:33 How to know when to stick with something vs pivot
• 15:45 The early days of Bluethumb
• 19:52 Staying true to your vision despite external noise
• 24:18 The fundraising journey for Bluethumb
• 32:03 The SmarterMail journey
• 38:02 Identifying and hiring talent
• 45:34 How he thinks about taking risks and running experiments
• 52:54 US Expansion

Our partners:

A big thank you to Freddy Grant and Ed Hartley for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

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Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

George’s links:

• George on LinkedIn
• Bluethumb
• Bluethumb on Instagram
• Art in my Home Podcast

People mentioned:

• Steve Jobs
• Richard Branson
• Edward Hartley
• Philip Slusarski
• Bradford D. Smart – Topgrading
• Freddy Grant
• Lorenzo Ghiberti

Companies mentioned:

• Costco
• Apple
• SoundCloud
• Luxury Escapes
• Zappos
• Startmate
• SmartrMail
• LivingSocial
• EVP
• Klayvio

Feedback/connect/say hello:

• Rohit@startupplaybook.co
• @RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
• /rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
• @rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
• My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here