Creators need a place to gather, to bounce ideas off each other and to find support as they build new things. Lumastic can be that place, said Drew Lytle, company co-founder and CEO.
Together with co-founder and CTO Keith Stolte, Lytle has created a virtual workplace for freelancers, side hustlers and entrepreneurs. On Lumastic, creatives can find the human interaction and feedback that has long been a part of office life but is often missing for people who work solo.
“The things that humans were designed to do, to learn and grow from each other, now has a place for that to happen at scale, en masse,” Lytle said.
The concept seems to have struck a chord. Lumastic was accepted into the fall 2020 cohort for Lighthouse Labs, a Richmond-based accelerator program, and was the first place winner of the demo day audience vote, earning a $5,000 prize.
As Lumastic pursues a $250,000 raise by the end of Q2 2021, Lytle has high aspirations for what it will mean to foster a virtual community for creatives.
“It’s the unlocking of human potential,” he said.
For Lytle, a recent University of Virginia graduate, building a “community of practice” is something he’s been thinking about for a while. As an educational YouTuber for the Smithsonian Institution and UVA, he had the chance to join a Slack channel for an international community of like-purposed people.
With more people pursuing creative, independent work, Lytle saw a need for a common platform for them to come together.
“The entire U.S. economy is moving to the creator economy, where each individual person is a freelancer and an independently skilled individual who’s working on many things at once,” Lytle said.
According to a study commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union, 57 million Americans performed freelance work in 2019, representing 35% of the U.S. workforce, an increase of 4 million freelancers since 2014.
Lumastic promotes itself as a community where people can create, connect and collaborate. It currently has about 90 active weekly users, mostly young professionals working on side projects like starting a podcast, running an Etsy shop or pursuing an entrepreneurial objective.
“The democratization of being able to make your ideas, that’s really what we’re going for,” Lytle said.
In December, Lumastic moved beyond the beta version of the site to launch its first base version of the product. Free for members, Lumastic’s business model calls for a paid subscription model from organizations like universities and startup accelerators, which can give members access to additional features.
Lighthouse Labs and Women’s Entrepreneurship @ UVA are the first two partnerships. Lumastic is also in discussions with the VCU DaVinci Center, Lytle said.