Executive Summary
Dapple is a submission-operations platform built for creative organisations that run structured submissions: magazines, journals, literary agents, arts organisations, awards teams, competitions, and exhibitions. The strongest value lies in replacing inbox chaos, messy spreadsheets, scattered forms, and manual judging with one unified workflow: collection → validation → review → scoring → decisions → communication.
Across the creative industry, most organisations still use improvised tooling. Dapple’s opportunity is to define a new category: Submission Ops — a centralised, secure, automated platform for high-volume creative submissions that involve multiple rounds, judges, editors, reviewers, and large media files.
Ideal Customer
The ICP is not “creatives.” It is creative operations teams who manage submissions at scale.
Primary ICP Groups:
- Magazines & Literary Journals — high volumes of essays, short stories, poetry, reviews, photography; complex guidelines; editors overloaded; slush piles difficult to manage.
- Awards Teams — creative awards, industry prizes, annual cycles, multi-round judging, category fees, sensitive timelines, and high-visibility outcomes.
- Arts Organisations — festivals, casting, theatre, performance, music demos; require support for audio/video files and multi-stage callbacks.
- Contests & Competitions — photography contests, film competitions, writing challenges, student competitions; often thousands of entries.
- Exhibitions & Galleries — residencies, commissions, open calls, art fairs; category-specific form fields and large high-resolution media.
- Literary Agents — overwhelmed by query inboxes; need automation, tagging, guidelines validation, and assignment between agents.
Emerging ICP: Creative universities and MFA programs running structured portfolio applications.
Across all segments, the shared pain is operational: high-volume submissions, large creative files, multi-round review processes, fragmented communication, and admin overload.
BELT Framework
BELT is a behavior model for diagnosing why customers buy. Full guide available on Growth Pigeon.
- Behavior: Creative teams drown in submissions, switching between inboxes, spreadsheets, forms, Dropbox links, and manual review notes. Admin hours are extremely high.
- Enduring: Creative submissions will always require structured review workflows, multi-stage judging, and collaboration across teams.
- Lock-ins: Custom workflows, review panels, message templates, tags, categories, analytics, and historical submissions create long-term dependency.
- Transient: Rising expectations for creator experience and transparent submission status; competitors relying on legacy UX create a wedge for modern tooling.
Hero Rewrite — Before and After
Before:
“Submission management for creative industries.”
After:
Run every creative submission — from first draft to final decision — in one unified, automated workspace.
New subhead: Collect, review, judge, and manage submissions with zero inbox chaos, no spreadsheets, and fully transparent workflows for your entire creative team.
Challenges and Future Value
| Current Challenge | Future Value |
|---|---|
| Teams rely on inboxes and spreadsheets to run submissions. | A dedicated Submission Ops platform replaces all fragmentation with one workflow from intake to final selection. |
| Large media files slow down review cycles. | Built-in previewing, fast toggling, and no-download flows enable reviewers to move through work 10× faster. |
| Judging panels operate in silos. | Unified dashboards give real-time scoring, comments, and progression visibility. |
| Creators are frustrated by slow responses and unclear status. | Real-time status updates turn applicants into fans and reduce inbound questions by 80%. |
| Managing multiple awards or calls is chaotic. | Parallel projects, categories, and rounds run cleanly from a single admin console. |
Why This Messaging Works
Dapple solves operational pain points deeply felt by creative organisations. Instead of positioning around “forms,” “submissions,” or “collections,” the messaging elevates Dapple into a workflow automation system that reduces admin overhead while improving creator experience. Creative teams don’t want another form builder — they want their nights and weekends back.
Differentiation
- Delight: Beautiful, fast submission experience for creators; frictionless for judges; instant previewing of media files.
- Hard to Copy: Multi-round workflows, guideline validation, tagging, review panels, automated messaging, large-file handling.
- Verticalised Strength: Purpose-built templates for journals, festivals, awards, exhibitions, contests, and agents.
- Pricing Advantage: Lower transaction fees than incumbents; instant Stripe payouts.
- Enterprise Capability: Multi-organisation accounts, permissions, security certifications, anonymous reviewing.
Strategy and Growth Loop
Strategy: Own the category of “Submission Ops” for creative industries. Win by delivering the cleanest creator experience and the fastest review workflows.
North Star Metric: Submissions processed per organisation per month.
Growth Loop:
- Organisation creates a branded submission form.
- Creators submit work → experience the modern workflow.
- Creators share their experience or publish about the submission process.
- Other organisations discover Dapple through word of mouth and category presence.
- Reviewers/judges invited to panels become new internal champions.
- More projects → more submissions → more viral surface area.
Final Recommendations
- Explicitly frame Dapple as a Submission Ops system, not a “submission manager.”
- Lead with operational value: speed, clarity, automation, and reduced admin hours.
- Segment the homepage by ICP types (journals, awards, arts, competitions, exhibitions, agents).
- Add more real examples of submission journeys and stage boards.
- Strengthen onboarding: “Create your first call in 5 minutes.”
- Develop industry-specific templates for high-search categories (poetry submissions, film festivals, photography contests, residencies).