About Us

Lyric is the platform I always wanted to exist. A bit of a backstory…

My first job at age 15 was in a glass studio. I was often in the studio cutting and soldering glass, but I was also the young tech guy. I spent many afternoons punching customer addresses into an Apple IIe database that spread across dozens of 5.25" floppy disks. When we were taking our goods to a new art fair or exhibit, I'd spend hours loading up the databases and running searches for folks in that city or state. I printed out mailing labels for those customers and manually stuck them to postcards announcing our upcoming shows. This was high-tech marketing back then, before email and Google Ads and social media and all of it. But you know what, it worked. We had a booming business.

It's been decades since I've done that work, but my heart has always remained with makers, artists, designers, and craftspeople of all kinds. I earned a degree in art (painting) and have kept a studio practice ever since.

My career took me to tech, where I supported home service professionals at Thumbtack, then farmers at Blue River, and later independent publishers at Substack. I've always been drawn to the idea of giving small businesses advantages that are typically reserved for the bigger players.

And that's why we're building Lyric. James and I started Lyric in the summer of 2024. We want to give artists and makers the best kind of opportunity to sell their work online. Good looking websites, marketing on auto-pilot. Let artists spend more time in the studio, and build great software to help run the business.

What truly sets Lyric apart is our focus on community. We wanted to change the dynamic that exists on most global platforms where sellers are going at it alone, with little sense of community or collaboration. On Lyric, we make it very explicit that you're selling with a community of others. By lifting each other up, we create more economic impact for everyone. This is how the real world works: you recommend a friend to someone, you trust someone's taste. But online, those incentives have become muddled with algorithmic games, fake reviews, affiliate deals, and cut-throat global competition.

Our vision is to bring this community ethos to e-commerce, creating something lasting and impactful, enabling makers and artists worldwide to sell with and through their communities.

We're just getting started, but we've been overwhelmed by the support from artists and makers who have joined the platform. They see the vision, they love supporting one another and bringing people together. And, of course, they're making more money selling their work.

Thank you for joining us!