Behance shows off your creative talent, attracts its first investor

Creative work portfolio-building startup Behance has grabbed $6.5 million in its first round of funding.

Behance is a marketplace for creatives — artists, graphic designers, web designers, writers, and the like — to showcase their work for companies that are looking for talent. Anyone can create a portfolio to show off their work on the site. The company also helps creative professionals promote their work and manage the responses they get from potential employers, like a LinkedIn for artists.

In fact, LinkedIn has partnered with Behance to help its users show off their talent on a Behance profile. The Rhode Island School of Design also works with Behance to show off its students’ work.

The previously bootstrapped company has attracted funding from Union Square Ventures, its lead investor on this round. Noted angel investors also participated, including Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, Path’s Dave Morin, Yves Behar, Chris Dixon, Dave Tisch, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Alexis Ohanian, and Garrett Camp.

Behance has grown quickly and has reached 2 million projects on the site, according to a company blog post. The company also boasts that users’ projects have received one billion views, with 75 million views in the last 30 days alone.

The funding will likely go towards hiring more team members, since Behance’s website makes it clear it’s looking for new talent. Behance also has plans to grow the business beyond its bootstrapped days.

Behance is based in New York City.