For most college students, throwing back a few beers and talking about the future is a fun pastime, a way to pretend they won’t get swallowed up in the corporate machine like the rest of their classmates. For recently graduated UW alums Jake Gafner and Walker Richardson, however, that fun pastime turned into an up-and-running web-based LLC.

Gafner and Richardson are the founders and owners of canvasmatch.com, a site that Gafner described as “an art platform where artists can make money doing what they love and where people who like art can get unique, personalized artwork.”

The site is essentially an evolved art commission website, where potential buyers can post their ideas for artwork they want created and choose from artists interested in creating it. Unlike traditional commission sites, on canvasmatch, buyers and sellers keep in contact throughout the completion of the art, ensuring the buyer is happy with the end result.

“Commissioning art isn’t a new idea, but you need a structure around the process to get the artist and the buyer on the same page, because they kind of speak a different language,” Gafner said.

Gafner brought the idea for canvasmatch to Richardson two summers ago after he was commissioned by a friend to paint still lifes for her kitchen. At the time, Gafner was still in grad school and Richardson had just graduated with a degree in computer science and a B.S. in personal finance.

“Through that experience I learned that it’s hard to make money as an artist unless you’re famous or have enough work to fill a gallery, and that if you’re commissioning art, as an artist it’s really hard to know what’s in the buyer’s head.” Gafner said. “The idea kind of came from both of those.”

But Gafner was no aspiring artist, as Richardson explains. “Jake brought the idea to me. Although he was in school earning his degree in industrial engineering and is a classic left-brainer on paper, he had randomly immersed himself in the world of commissioned artwork,” Richardson said.

Although art was a new angle, the idea of creating a web startup was a familiar one. “(Richardson and I) would get together weekly and have a few beers and throw out entrepreneurial ideas, and this is one we threw out and thought, you know, this could actually be a real business,” Gafner said. “We knew we wanted to start something that was low overhead, scalable and took advantage of a two-sided platform,” Richardson added. “Canvasmatch seemed to pass the test.”

The only problem was that neither Gafner nor Richardson had any experience in building a website. “We decided we wanted to build the whole thing from scratch,” Gafner said. “But neither one of us knew anything about coding.” This did not deter the friends from going ahead with the project, however.

“We just bought a book and we started reading it, and we created a very rudimentary website,” Gafner said. “From there we just read other books or we read stuff online, and we just kept going.”

Canvasmatch officially launched in February of this year, exactly a year after Gafner and Richardson began work on the project. Both have managed to juggle the site and their full-time jobs.

“If you’re working on the site at 1 a.m. when you have to go to work the next day, it’s tough,” Gafner admitted. But neither Gafner nor Richardson have shied from the responsibilities that come with starting and singlehandedly operating their own business.

“Jake and I are 50/50 in this, so we share the founder title,” Richardson said. “He is responsible for the back-end code as the developer, and I make everything pretty as the designer.”

After coming up with a concept, learning to code, building a website, and applying for a business license, Gafner and Richardson now have an up and running web startup with 22 contributing artists and 70 potential buyers registered. According to Gafner, artists in any medium can join the site, and buyers don’t need anything but an idea to seek commissioned art.

Although Gafner admits the site is still in its infancy, he hopes it will have 250 users by June, a goal he sees as reachable. At the moment, “We’re really focusing on getting buyers that have ideas for art, because they’re the ones that will bring the artists along,” he said. “My focus is on helping artists make money.” So far the site has helped artists make roughly $2,500 through commissions.

For students interested in starting their own businesses, “There are a lot of resources out there, even if you don’t know anyone who’s done anything like this,” Gafner said. Books, local government, the Internet and campus resources are among those Gafner and Richardson cite as ways to get started. But above all for Gafner, “The best advice that I have is to just do it.”

For more information on canvasmatch, or to register as an artist or buyer, visit www.canvasmatch.com.