Lumen — marketplace for independent creators
Two-sided marketplace connecting independent creators with brands looking to commission work — search, escrow, contracts.
- Semantic creator search
- Stripe Connect escrow + payouts
- Contract generation engine
- Milestone-based payment flow
- Creator + brand dashboards
What they needed to solve.
Lumen had a Notion-board MVP — search via Ctrl-F, payments via PayPal invoices, contracts via Google Docs. Demand was outpacing the founders' ability to do everything by hand.
How we approached it.
A proper two-sided marketplace with semantic creator search, Stripe Connect escrow, contract generation, milestone-based payment, and a creator dashboard that lets independents see exactly when, why, and how much they're getting paid.
Design decisions.
- AaGeist Sans — UI
- AaGeist Mono — figures
- AaGT Walsheim — brand surfaces
Creator-side and brand-side share components but diverge in tone. Money is always visible, milestones always tracked. Search results show context, not just thumbnails.
- Semantic search with portfolio context
- Escrow-led trust UX (creators paid on milestone)
- Brief-to-match in under 12 hours
What changed.
Notion-board MVP, manual matching, PayPal payments, Google Docs contracts, founders doing everything by hand.
Full marketplace, semantic search, Stripe Connect escrow, milestone payments, automated contracts.