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March 5, 2025

How Artizen Awarded $2.3M in Funding With Bubble

A traditional development team was slowing down the build of Artizen, a crowdfunding platform for artists. When founder René Pinnell found Nate Van Cleve, a Bubble Developer, they were able to launch 10X faster, save $125K/month, and award $2.3M in funding.
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How Artizen Awarded $2.3M in Funding With Bubble

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Bubble dev

$125K/month

saved

10X

faster to launch

When René Pinnell first set out to democratize funding for artists through Artizen, he took the traditional route and hired a full development team — a choice that proved slow and costly. But after meeting Nate Van Cleve, a Bubble Developer who built complex platforms single-handedly, he let go of his staff, ditched traditional dev, and brought his entire business onto Bubble. 
With Nate as the sole builder, Artizen launched 10 times faster, saved $125,000 a month, and awarded more funds than ever before. To date, the company has distributed more than $2.3 million to projects featuring major talent like the Wu-Tang Clan and Cate Blanchett.

From a team of 10 traditional developers to 1 Bubbler

In 2007, after a decade in Hollywood, René saw funding for artists as “a rigged game that rewards conformity over creativity.” It made him wonder if there was an easier, more democratic way of helping artists find funding. 

The idea sprouted Artizen, which today is a fully functional, community-driven funding platform that empowers creative projects. It operates through three key mechanisms: pooled cryptocurrency donations, community-led project selection, and digital “Artifacts” — unique collectibles that capture pivotal moments or ideas from funded projects. These Artifacts not only give donors partial ownership but also unlock additional funding from sponsors, reinforcing the platform’s mission to support innovation.




At first, René hired a team of 10 traditional developers to build the product. “I was like, ‘Okay, let’s get the very best people, and let’s build this with a high degree of craftsmanship and polish.’” The decision, though, proved to be too slow. 

“I thought if I hired all these talented people, we would build and ship products quickly. But the exact opposite happened,” he said.

“I reached out and asked, ‘How big is your team?’ And he told me he didn’t have one — it was just him using Bubble...I couldn’t believe it.”

While searching for a workaround, René stumbled upon Nate on X/Twitter — a Bubble Developer who was building a donation platform with features similar to Artizen.

“I reached out and asked, ‘How big is your team?’ And he told me he didn’t have one — it was just him using Bubble. He didn’t even know how to code. I couldn’t believe it,” René said.

At the time, René was racing to launch one of the app’s core features, the curation engine: users vote on their favorite projects which then receive funding. With the deadline looming and progress slow, he offered Nate the chance to build it, and Nate took it.

Building Artizen’s curation engine with no-code

The build was complex, requiring the app to run smoothly across multiple phases, or “seasons” — voting, post-voting, buying, registration, and competition — each with its own unique challenges.

To stay true to Artizen’s crypto-native vision, Nate used a mix of plugins, including a few from Web3 NoCode Plugins, to integrate MetaMask, WalletConnect, and other NFT tools. He also implemented complex conditional logic throughout the app to ensure seamless functionality.

The result was so impressive that René let go of his team of traditional developers and asked Nate to rebuild the product completely on Bubble. 




“It quickly became clear that we could build products much faster and cheaper with tools like Bubble. We needed to rethink how we operated as a company,” René said. “Bubble and Nate gave me the confidence to rebuild Artizen from the ground up.”

10X faster development, $125K/month saved, $2.3M awarded to artists

By to Bubble, they rebuilt Aritzen 10 times faster — and reduced burn from $150,000 a month to $25,000 a/month.

Rebuilding Artizen was a process of experimentation. For example, they did some trial and error with the voting system. Initially, they gave every vote equal weight, but eventually landed on a dynamic system where voter power scales with factors like financial contributions, past success as a creator, and proven curation ability. (All of that complexity is distilled into a single button press — complete with celebratory confetti, one of Nate and René’s favorite fun Bubble plugins.) 

“Bubble and Nate gave me the confidence to rebuild Artizen from the ground up.”

Nate says Bubble has been the perfect tool for the job. “The combination of low cost and speed allows us to try out a lot of bad ideas, build them, and then rebuild if we need to,” René says. “We can break things, fix them, experiment, and play. Honestly, I think that’s what’s missing from software development today, and Bubble gives us that — the freedom to be experimental like artists.”

To date, they’ve awarded more than $2.3 million to artists and creators on the platform.




Looking ahead, Nate envisions making Artizen a gamified experience that rewards users for voting and makes collecting NFTs even more engaging. They also plan to add more tools for creators to help them fundraise and connect with their fans, as well as tools for sponsors to curate projects and grow their ecosystems.

No matter how Artizen evolves, though, Nate and René are certain that Bubble is the ideal platform to help them grow — they’re pacing to hit $10M awarded by the end of this year.

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