“Entrepreneurship is about being a producer rather than a consumer,” writes Luke Johnson in the recently published “Start It Up” to explain why entrepreneurs do what they do. I rarely label myself an entrepreneur, although I was involved in starting and running three ventures, mainly because I prefer talk about what I do or have done rather than the category that it fits into, but I do completely buy into the concept of the desire to produce, to create, to change the status quo, to move things.

I grew up in the States which might have fostered the can-do mindset further, and with it my inherent tendency to communicate. I studied electrical engineering, in my home country of Slovenia, where social science studies at the time were predominantly Marxist and didn’t warrant an internationally relevant education. I knew then that I wasn’t going to be a practicing engineer and while still in school, I helped two friends set up an advertising agency. It was a time of shift into a full market economy and the services landscape was quite barren at the time, hence ideal for starting a business. We managed international clients such as Fiat / Lancia / Alfa Romeo and Gauloises and learned by doing and the agency became part of a worldwide network in its third year.

I was offered the opportunity to create and host a television show about advertising and I grabbed it with both hands. It became a success against the odds – it was thought that the topic wouldn’t be of interest, and it was a pleasure to show that any subject can garner wide interest if addressed in the right way. Audiences were more interested in the strategies and tactics behind the communication that was being served to them than expected. I spent seven years interviewing the world’s top media people, directors, actors and politicians to deliver that insight.

In 2003, I was invited to co-found what became one of the world’s first major crowdsourcing ventures, OpenAd. OpenAd sourced concepts for advertising from professionals worldwide and sold them to companies big and small directly.

It was an easy project to fall in love with – for anyone who likes a good challenge. I’d run an agency long enough to know the advertising creation process was broken, and that ironically, it was the communication between client and agency – certainly as regards remuneration – that was often skewed. While industry events propagated the idea that great ideas can come from anywhere, it was not a sincere belief widely shared by the establishment. OpenAd wanted to give creative professionals around the world equal opportunity to sell their work, regardless of their provenance, gender, age or reputation, to sell the pure merit of the concept, cloaked creativity as we called it.

After two years of evangelization on five continents, a category was born. Crowdsourcing creativity certainly didn’t have a name then and creative professionals needed to be reassured in person that their most valuable assets were in good hands.

Some subsequent attempts by ‘the establishment’ were plagued by lack of creative community support, and what I’m still quite proud of is that we got the balance of automated and human support for managed professional crowdsourcing just right. That, and that we sold our creatives’ work to the world’s biggest – and smallest – advertisers. (And that we got through the many attacks, but then one of my first jobs was as an interpreter for war journalists, so this didn’t seem so tough in comparison.) I still see services emulating our model pop up on a monthly basis, which is very flattering. Less so, that we became collateral to the market downturn due to our funding and eventually had to freeze operations.

It was great Ad-Venture and we were proud to have 13,000 creative professionals from 125 countries join us and companies including the world’s biggest advertiser buy from us.

Folding was of course a tremendous disappointment, but to me personally, it brought with it the good fortune to be able to start over and rebuild a life from scratch. It's an experience I’d like to document and share at some point, but for now I apply it to my work and whomever I can help dust off and pick up after setbacks large and small.

Throughout my career and particularly when I jump started my life again, I received a multitude of random acts of kindness, as well the requisite kicks and stabs, for both of which I am grateful as they have spurred me on in equal measure. I’ve absorbed the shocks and endeavor to return the acts of kindness by sending down the elevator to the next person who can use some help. I mentor and coach regularly, mostly start-up founders and small business owners, to help with starting or growing their businesses or to make public presentation enjoyable and thus more successful.

I’ve also had the privilege of being given the opportunity to assist great companies as a consultant and as with mentoring, it is an immensely gratifying experience.

Talk to me at
katarina (at) katarinaskoberne.com