Artsy Art Marketplace

Jasmine Trabelsi and I Co-founded the original Artsy platform in 1999 through a grant at UMass Amherst. Artsy was the first platform/marketplace to showcase art by women artists and writers. Our platform was one of the first (aside from Mixed Greens) to experiment with selling art online as well. Our CTO was Kellan Elliott-McCrea who went on to build Flickr, Etsy, Dropbox, Adobe's Frame.io,

In 1999 (without any advertising and before social media) we grew our individual visitors to 60,000 per month. We interviewed Yoko Ono, De La Soul, Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero. We also ran a print magazine. We created a global community focused on promoting artistic women through signups, website, art exhibits, and fan mail. We developed the name to be ironic. Female artists never had the respect that male artists achieved. A creative woman was never considered to be a Master. Women were usually referred to as being Artsy. 

Artsy stopped in 2001 since the art world went on hiatus and budgets were cut. In 2008 two male founders took our idea, removed the female aspect, raised $280m, and launched Artsy.net. We still own the original rights to the Artsy name. This is referred to as the Matilda Effect. The broader historical bias where men were awarded for women's breakthroughs in the sciences. Historical painters whose works were misattributed to men for centuries.

Jasmine and I recorded a podcast about building Artsy, which you can check out on Youtube and Spotify.