| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | 3D Models |
| Founded | New Orleans, Louisiana (2000) |
| Founder(s) | Matt Wisdom Andy Wisdom David Avgikos Tom Avgikos |
| Headquarters | New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Matt Wisdom (CEO) |
| Products | Stock 3D Models |
| Services | Custom 3D Models |
| Employees | 70 (October 2011) |
| Website | www.turbosquid.com |
TurboSquid is a digital media supply company headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The company sells custom-built and stock 3D models used in 3D graphics to a variety of industries, including computer games, architecture, and interactive training. The company is most known for its pioneering marketplace that brokers the sale of 3D models in return for a percentage of the sales. As of 2011, TurboSquid had over 225,000 3D models in its library, making it the largest library of 3D models for sale in the world.
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The original idea for an online marketplace began in 1995, with New Orleans natives Matt Wisdom and Andy Wisdom envisioning a world where computing involved infinitely fast CPUs, infinitely big hard drives, and infinitely fast network speeds. Such a world would enable the instant transmission of all known digital media between any users, and thus make the observance of intellectual property copyright a "voluntary act" by consumers of digital media due to the low friction of obtaining these files. The solution, which ultimately became TurboSquid, was to create a marketplace and become the "last middleman" for all artists to sell their digital creations.
Matt Wisdom and Andy Wisdom were partners in Chimera Digital Imaging, a company that produced 3D animation for television commercials 1994-2000. After creating 3D models that sat as unused and unmonetized inventory, the suitability of 3D models for such a marketplace became clear.[1][2] They officially began software development of a marketplace in 1999 under the brand iPublish.
At the same time Digimation, a New Orleans company founded by David Avgikos, was working on a similar project called 3dBay. The two groups merged to officially form TurboSquid in April 2000. Backed by angel funding, the company announced the new marketplace at the Siggraph conference in August 2000. Autodesk subsequently distributed 3ds max 4 with a TurboSquid add-on, and TurboSquid received its first venture investment in April 2001.
Disagreement over many aspects of the company led to the departure of Tom Avgikos, and initial CEO David Avgikos, and a complete separation from Digimation in 2002. Andy Wisdom served as the CEO for the next several years.
In 2005, Matt Wisdom and Andy Wisdom initiated and were instrumental in drafting and passing the Louisiana Digital Media Act (Louisiana Senate Bill 341), which seeks to stimulate growth in the technology sector by providing tax credits to digital media companies.[3][4] Also in 2005, levee failures in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic flooding and prompted the evacuation of nearly 500,000 city residents, including all of TurboSquid's New Orleans staff. Because the company's business is run on servers outside New Orleans, and employees were able to continue work over the Internet, the site's business was able to maintain record growth through the whole period of displacement. CEO Andy Wisdom decided the company should return to New Orleans rather than relocate, and should actively participate in rebuilding the city, which it did in November 2005.[5]
In 2006, Matt Wisdom became the company CEO. Andy Wisdom moved on to Chairman of TurboSquid's board and began working in the finance industry. TurboSquid still maintains its headquarters in New Orleans.
As for the company's unusual name, Matt Wisdom said the following: "Having a good brand is a really important part of having a business. The idea of a squid was something we could brand around; a squid conjures the idea of having tentacles everywhere. And 'turbo' - well, everything that was big in the '80s was 'turbo.' Not surprisingly, the domain name TurboSquid.com was available. When I asked five different people about the name, three of them liked it a lot, one of them hated it, but came around, and one hated it, but remembered it. That's the sign of a good brand. And it was more passionate than Media-Exchange.com."[6]
In August 2009, TurboSquid implemented the SquidGuild, a loyalty program that pays higher royalties to artists who post their 3D models exclusively at TurboSquid.[7] It was met with some controversy, as royalty rates were lowered for non-exclusive members. By the summer of 2010, the majority of top sellers had joined.
In August 2011 TurboSquid introduced the CheckMate Certification program, where models are checked against a unified 3D modeling standard developed by TurboSquid, and passing models are marked as certified in their catalog. The standard was developed over a two-year period from surveys and interviews with over 1000 production artists, and was tested in a private beta program with artists and customers Jan-July 2011.[8] By December 2011 more than 2500 models at TurboSquid had been CheckMate certified, with over 100 artists participating.[9] TurboSquid plans to make the CheckMate standards available to the industry for use in-house at production studios.[10]