Managing people as a product can be challenging at the best of times, said Calgary creative talent manager Kristyn Snell.
It was her own experience back in 2019 when she unexpectedly lost her brother that pushed her towards finding a project management solution for the creative world.
Snell is the founder and CEO of Calgary creative management and public relations firm MODERNSPEAK, and also the founder and CEO of Digitote Inc. Her PR firm manages more than 25 creators around the world. They handle the business side of creative work for creative professionals.
“Our agency works through all of those details, and then we basically package it up and give it to the creator so they can deal with the creative side of things,” she said.
When she lost her brother in 2019, it exposed a need for project management software. That’s when she founded Digitote – a digital tote bag.
“When that happened, I almost lost my business because I needed time off to grieve and to go through that journey of what that looked like and my business wasn’t organized in a way where I could step away,” she said.
“So, creators didn’t know where to find anything.”
Snell said she was doing too much hand-holding with the creators, building a situation where they weren’t able to do anything without her physically being there.
“I was like, ‘this is just not any way to live,'” she said.
That’s when Snell decided it was time to build a piece of software for the agency to solve this problem. When she saw that nothing existed like it, she decided to turn it into a piece of proprietary software and build a business around it.
It’s project management software for creatives and agencies – they can see all the projects listed, the campaigns, when they go live, the deliverables and more. She said it’s lifting the veil on an industry where often the agencies and creators silo the information they each have.
“I’m trying to bring transparency to the industry to and access like people who are working on the creative side should have access to what you know we’ve done for them on the business side,” Snell said.
‘I’m a non-technical founder’: Snell
Digitote is a case of Snell coming up with an idea to fill a gap in her industry – one she knows well.
“I’m a non-technical founder,” she said.
“I had an idea and I was able to find some folks that could help me bring that idea to life through the technical side.”
Being a part of the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program has helped Snell put the pieces in place to operate a business based around tech. Talking to experts and connecting with others with technical acumen have been game-changing in allowing her to get this startup off the ground.
“It feels like this community in Alberta has just done such a good job of making sure that tech startups can succeed,” Snell said.
“Oftentimes we keep hearing these quotes like only five per cent of startups succeed, and it’s like, ‘oh my gosh, that’s scary.’ I think they’re not trying to say it to scare us but also what they’re doing with these programs is they’re trying to increase that number from five per cent.”
There was a soft launch of Digitote at the end of 2023. From there, Snell said it would be continuously marketing the subscription-based system to agencies and creators and tweaking the system along the way.
“I just know that two years ago, if somebody would have walked up to me and said, ‘Here’s the solution to the problem that you’re currently experiencing, and it was this, I would have signed up for it immediately and been just so grateful to have that,” she said.
“So, my hope is that will be the experience for other creators like myself.”
