Function Point Connects Creatives With Industry Expert Webinars

Function Point launched its inaugural webinar—The New Age of Niche: What Your Creative Agency Can Learn from the Startup Space—a webinars series featuring experts in the creative agency industry.

Chris Wilson, Founder & CEO of Function Point said, “Our mission is to help creative thinkers be more productive and profitable and to help them achieve their own goals. We came up with the idea of producing a webinar series, led by industry professionals, as a great way to connect agencies online and share industry best practices.”

This webinar was hosted by Wilson and featured Steve Haak, VP Partner – Strategy & UX, Solid State Pros. In the webinar, Haak spoke about how the digital landscape shifted between 2001 and 2010; with the introduction of multiplayer games, mobile, and new delivery models, the face of internet agencies and brands changed. Markets matured. Big agencies rolled up small agencies, and the most innovative work was hard to deliver in a new world that was hungry for originality and demanded lightning-quick turnaround.

“Many senior leaders and strategists would leave and start their own agencies,” said Haak. “They missed the excitement and creative energy they could bring.” Haak detailed how his experience with Solid State Pros, which was founded in 2010 and relaunched in 2014, has excelled as a boutique agency engaging with startups, an overlooked and underserved niche. Now Solid State Pros has equity in four startups and will be partnering with 20 more in the upcoming year.

Haak noted that although there are challenges working with startups—in that they require a lot of effort and more guidance than a big brand client familiar with the agency process—they are also a lot of fun.

In addition, startups are very energetic, diverse, and you get to work with a small, passionate team who can and need to pivot very quickly. Agencies can negotiate a mix of deferred compensation in the form of equity and a seat on the startup’s board, and still be paid for some of their hourly work. Operating in the niche of the startup space has led Solid State Pros to create a proprietary software solution and tool called Vet Cloud, which helps investors evaluate and vet startup products and ideas. Finally, Haak talked about ways for agencies to break into the startup space and places to meet startups.

“We were really pleased by the high turnout for the first webinar,” said Wilson. “It clearly demonstrates the need to have a forum where creatives can gather and learn from each other. The relevance and importance of the subject matter drew numbers too,” he added. “It’s a highly competitive industry, and finding a market niche agencies appeal to and excel in, can result in many benefits.” The topic was one that Function Point is intimately familiar with. As a cloud-based, SaaS provider, the company has focused on a niche in the marketplace by developing project resource management software specifically for creative agencies, design studios, and internal marketing departments.

Function Point’s first webinar The New Age of Niche: What Your Creative Agency Can Learn from the Startup Space is now available to watch online.

If you are exploring project resource management software solutions and want to see what Function Point can do for you, we invite you to talk to one of our task management software experts. Book a personalized demo today and find out what FP.’s project resource management software can bring to the table.

This article was contributed by former Function Point employee, Kaitlyn Yeung