Envato SuccessStory

Envato’s Initial Stages and Achievements

Initially,Envato began as a lifestyle business. Ta’eed was raised in Papua, New Guinea. He then moved to Australia in order study Computer Science and Mathematics, where after few days Ta’eed became good friends with Jun Rung who was studying design at the same university. Ta’eed got so fascinated with designing that he diverted his focus on graphic design and started learning it with the help of online tutorials, design books,  and magazines. This mode of learning became the inspiration of Ta’eed behind introducing Envato’s Tuts+. After few days, Ta’eed started the business of selling Flash Files on iStockPhoto which in turn yielded a fancy sum of $400 every month. This in turn striked in him the idea of incorporating “FlashDen” as one of those 8 Envato sites, a trading place exclusively mean for the Flash Files. Flash Den was successfully launched in the year 2006 but then in 2009, its name was changed to Active Den after a trademark claim from Adobe.

Initially, the company had no official technical co- founder thus they decided to recruit a skilled developer who can build the Flash Den’s fledgling version. After days of great efforts, the company’s first office was established at Cyan Ta’eed’s parent’s basement garage. In 2007, Vahid Ta’eed, brother of Colllis Ta’eed joined the venture as its fourth owner. Few days later the company launched its blog dedicated to freelancing and named it as “FreelanceSwitch” then a photoshop tutorial website was introduced called “Psdtuts+”.

A year later, two more sites were incorporated in this digital marketplace named, “ThemeForest” and “AudioJungle”, an exclusive trading place for audio and stock music. In 2009, the company introduced an online center of stock footage, video files and motion graphics called “VideoHive” and “GraphicRiver” meant exclusively for Stock Graphics. The venture launched “CodeCanyon” and “Photodune”in the year 2010 and the “3dOcean” in the year 2011, it hosted a wide range of 3D models and related accessories.