Built by artists who've freelanced for 15+ years.

We're artists who've freelanced for 15+ years — in animation, VFX, illustration, and design. We've tracked bookings and holds on napkins, in sketchbooks, in Excel sheets, and in Google Calendar next to birthdays and dentist appointments. None of it was ever ideal.

We've chased NET30 payments. We've filled out Workbook hours because a studio required it. We went remote across countries during COVID and spent that whole stretch trying to figure out what to actually set aside for taxes, with no real idea until the bill showed up.

There's no freelance tool out there that's actually built for freelancers — it's all accounting platforms bent into a rough shape, or complex producer sheets nobody outside a studio could read. None of it was built for animators, VFX artists, designers, illustrators, or visual people of any kind.

Firsthold started as something we built for ourselves, out of necessity. It grew into something more only because friends kept asking for access to solve the same freelance bottlenecks in their own work.

Our core idea hasn't changed since: this should be visually simple, easy to use, and never overwhelming. If something about how the industry actually works is missing, that's a bug — tell us.