Arcbazar: Architectural Design for the Crowd by the Crowd

Hi Tom, we developed the idea during the recession in the US in 2010. At the time about 90,000 architects got laid off, and we were trying to develop a platform where we could easily connect clients with architects and create potential new projects for the immense idle design talent that was around. We simply wanted to appropriate the traditional fair competition model that was utilized for millenia on monuments and other seminal architecture to everyday design challenges, e.g. bathrooms, through our crowdsourcing platform. We targeted smaller design projects, e.g. kitchens, additions etc., which amounts to an immense $170B in the US alone; but about 90% of these projects never cross a designers desk but are executed through contractors or DIY'ers. We got incorporated late 2011, and since attracted thousands of designers and clients; and, completed about a thousand projects - these are remodeling projects, landscape and interior design challenges, new residential projects and commercial/public projects. If we were a regular architecture firm, we would be already the "World's Largest Architectural Design Company" :) But kidding aside, we became one of Entrepreneur Magazine's "100 Most Brilliant Companies" this year. We are proud of this achievement!