Envato Celebrates 10 Years in Business

Envato is celebrating 10 years in business today. Founders Collis and Cyan Ta’eed started the company out of their garage in Sydney in 2006 with the launch of ActiveDen (originally called FlashDen). Envato expanded to provide an umbrella for a variety of different endeavors in the following years, including PSD Tuts and Freelance Switch launched in 2007, followed by Themeforest and AudioJungle in 2008, and CodeCanyon in 2010.

In a video created to celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary, Collis Ta’eed said the couple had no experience with starting or running a business and in the early days they thought, “I sure hope we make it.” Both founders used to sell products like Flash templates and photographs and worked to build a marketplace they would want to sell on.

As of August 2016, Envato’s community has earned more than $400,000,000, and a significant portion of that revenue comes from WordPress products. Christian “Kriesi” Budschedl, a WordPress theme seller, became the first author to reach $1 million in sales on the marketplace in December 2011. Four years later, Themefusion, makers of the Avada theme, became the first author to reach $10 million. According to stats Envato posted last year after Pressnomics, WordPress products continue to play a key role in the company’s growth and dominate sales for the marketplaces’ top authors.

“Our success metrics are based on community earnings…Having recently passed the $400M community earnings mark, we’re aiming for that coveted goal of $1B,” Cyan Ta’eed said in Envato’s 10th anniversary post today. The company is focusing on launching two new products: Envato Elements, a membership site for design templates and assets, and Sites, a website creation and hosting platform.