The creative community is ripe for startup building tools and services to serve their interests and needs as they transition from their traditional offline practices into a digital present and future. Domestika is a popular site that creates and sells online video tutorials and courses covering a range of visual arts and related skills, building a larger community around that content where members can also interact and learn from each other.
The Series D has raised around $200 million to date, with additional contributions from GSV and other unnamed, private investors. Domestika's last round was in October of 2016 when it closed a $20 million Series C on a $350 million valuation.
There is a lot of logic behind those numbers. The size of the company is important. More than 2,000 courses have been created by 1,300 creative professionals and Domestika is adding on average 112 new courses every month. It has more than 8 million members and 13 million courses taken by them.
Cotorruelo said in an interview that the company's community of users is growing. The courses are produced by Domestika, but in conjunction with the teachers, they are not great at producing online courses. The teachers are part of the community at the end of the day. The wheel never stops.
All courses have subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, French, Polish and Dutch.
Domestika was started in Madrid as a small online community for creatives and moved to the Bay Area to expand into online learning. The company told me that my interview with Cotorruelo was one of the first ones they did.
COO Tomy Pelluz thought of it as a reference to feeling comfortable in the community, not the domestic arts. You are with your people, Cotorruelo said.
Domestika has been around for a long time, but its focus and attention is getting more and more attention due to the fact that it is popular with users and investors.
One important fact is how the community is organised around artistic and creative output. At a time when many are turning away from large, general purpose social experiences in favor of smaller groups or groups based around specific interests, and in general more controlled environments where you are less likely to get harassed and perhaps you are less of a target for malicious hackers looking for the biggest impact, Facebook has been pushing the idea of communities and groups, although my experience is that keeping those communities focused is a daily chore for admins of those communities.
The image is called Domestika.
The startup focuses on e-learning. In the past couple of years, education has been one of the most significant categories in the tech industry. When the Pandemic made in-person lessons impossible, traditional education providers turned to remote collaboration services to continue teaching. With a lot of their regular activities outside the home reduced, consumers turned to doing more indoors, leading to record levels of traffic in areas like language learning, skills training and more.
Domestika's attraction to investors was greatly influenced by both of these.
It is not the only company that has been focusing on building out services for the global community of creative professionals and enthusiasts. CreativeLive has been focusing on educational content for this segment of the market. Superside is building tools to help its users connect with job opportunities, and then to manage those engagements through its platform. Adobe has created a strong platform by building tools and community services for creatives, and you could imagine how it might eventually also build out more content, both based on its own tools but also more general skills, to keep those users engaged.
The business model of Domestika speaks of an interesting approach that has played into its popularity.
The Domestika community is free of charge, and users pay for courses, which accounts for most of the revenues. Some courses are free, so people can try them out. These courses are not on a monthly subscription.
Cotorruelo said that they don't believe in an all you can eat model. Two-thirds of Domestika's 8 million users are active participants.
You can get certifications for certain courses, but that's not the point, Cotorruelo said. Sure, you can get a better job or make more money by learning a new skill, but it's more about joy.
It is not something that Domestika has set up as part of its platform, although sometimes it happens by chance. One way that this stands out is that it doesn't have any plans to do this, which is in contrast to the kind of freelancer marketplace that has recently been built out by LinkedIn.
At a time when creativity is more important than ever, Domestika has the scale to impact millions more around the world through its unique approach to education in creativity. I'm excited to support the team as they grow.
The team at Domestika prove every day that learning should be social, joyful, and beautiful. They have opportunities to continue to grow and scale.
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