Episode 83: Joaquin Cuenca - Co-Founder & CEO of Freepik - Bootstrapping A Startup To $300M Valuation

In this episode, we catch up with Joaquin Cuenca, Co-Founder and CEO of Freepik. Located in the center of the sunny Malaga, Spain, Freepik is a leading global tech company with a goal to help anyone create great designs faster by producing and distributing high-quality graphic and audiovisual resources. Freepik has over 500 employees and more than 800 freelance designers collaborators and 52,000 registered contributors. Joaquin shares the journey of building Freepik and bootstrapping the company to $300M valuation. He discusses the tough decisions made to keep growing without raising capital and emphasizes the importance of staying focused on users and providing them with a starting point for their creativity. Joaquin talks about the impact of AI on the company and the need to adapt to the changing landscape of design tools. He also shares Freepik's vision to help people create great design faster to express the power of their ideas and to make a positive impact in underrepresented regions. Takeaways 1.When bootstrapping a company being ready to make tough decisions and staying focused on user needs is a must. 2.AI has been a total game changer for enhancing creativity and improving design processes. 3.The biggest breakthrough in Freepik's history was when they changed from being a search engine for content to hosting the content themselves. This episode of EU-Startups Podcast is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, with Vanta it can be super simple. Trusted by over 7,000 companies, Vanta automates the pricey, time-consuming process of prepping for ISO 27001,SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and more. Learn more here: http://vanta.com/eustartups