After a decade of working in engineering and digital art, Jordan Stevens noticed a problem that plagued almost everyone — file management.
Traditional storage platforms, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, weren't designed for the different types of digital files that an artist may have. Those issues were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person collaboration moved online.
Stevens and his co-founder Nachiket Kumar created a team, mostly Savannah College of Art and Design graduates, to create Mudstack in 2019. The company provides a platform for digital artists and studios to manage and store their content on the cloud and get feedback on their work.
Mudstack has grown to 1,000 individual artists and 170 studios using the platform. The company saw most of that growth in the first three months of 2022. To date, the company has raised $2.5 million from Atlanta venture capital firm Overline and Boston's Hyperplane Venture Capital, among other investors.
“We want to be the platform where artists live and work regardless of what or how they're creating,” Stevens said. “If you’re an artist working with others, we want you to wake up in the morning and plug into Mudstack.”
The recent growth spurt corresponds with the rising popularity of the metaverse, a growing collection of interconnected virtual reality and digital platforms with online personas, art, real estate and businesses. People can log in and interact, similar to a multiplayer video game. The global market for the metaverse, which was estimated at $107.1 billion in 2020, is projected to reach $758.6 billion by 2026, according to a February report from ReportLinker.
Mark Zuckurberg, CEO of Facebook parent company Meta Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), popularized the concept metaverse last year when he introduced his vision for a virtual world. Zuckerberg changed his company's name to reflect what he thought was the future of interpersonal interaction
The expansion of the metaverse could increase Mudstack’s users by 100 times, Stevens said. As more people and businesses interact in the metaverse, there will be an increased need for digital art platforms that manage their content. Mudstack has 10 employees and may double that headcount by the end of the year, focusing on sales, marketing and engineering, Stevens said.
“There are 15 million professional creators of digital experiences, but there are almost 4 billion players," Stevens said. "The metaverse will take all these people that have only digested content and turn them into creators.”
Mudstack has already entered the metaverse. Some of its largest customers sell virtual land. Another customer, which Stevens declined to name, has millions of users in the virtual world. Stevens hopes Mudstack can become the preeminent platform for digital creators to manage content because their competitors don’t provide the same holistic service.
“Other platforms are so niche, focused on one tenant like asset management or collaboration,” Stevens said. “We’re the only platform looking from the 1,000 ft view and saying ‘Hey, there is a unified technology that makes it easy for anyone to create with all the tools they need.’”
Mudstack isn't the only Atlanta company to join the virtual world. The Atlanta Braves announced plans to become the first Major League Baseball team to join the metaverse. Shipping behemoth United Parcel Service Inc. submitted several trademark filings that indicate plans to enter the metaverse.
