[kenjackson]

They may be losing cheap cusomters today, but maybe not tomorrow. Much like OSS, cheap design comes in all different ranges of quality. But no one pays attention to the bad stuff, but will take notice of the good stuff.

Startups will then look at the fact that they spend more money on design than SW tools, yet their competitor just spent $1k for all the design on their site and is doing really well. The only ppl who know they were using 99designs are others in the industry.

Over time this will disrupt the design industry (at least for SW products) -- and I don't think it can be stopped. But I don't think its necessarily a bad thing at all.