We Are A Creative-Led Company
A mockup of the Sublimate user’s welcome page. Our focus at Sublimate is on building tools for the creative individual to control the generative capacity unlocked by their likeness and ideas.
The standard tech playbook goes something like this: build an MVP, show early traction, raise investor dollars, and j-curve adoption as fast as possible. There are more steps in between, but that is the model most startups, especially in Silicon Valley, are incentivized to follow.
I prefer a different model. Bootstrap to revenue. Build an MVP, get paid, white-knuckle it for a stretch, and earn proof that the product is genuinely needed and the business can sustain itself on the basis of that need: enough revenue to satisfy customers and keep employees paid competitively.
That’s how we’re building at Sublimate. Our investors, as of this writing, are our two co-founders and our advisors, who contribute their time and a modest amount of capital in exchange for minimally diluted equity and a shared commitment to our vision.
As CEO, I made the decision to pursue this model and adopt the following principles:
Creatives lead the way. Sublimate is a creative-led business. In the recent history of AI development, creators, studios, athletes, and brands were not at the table. Their intellectual property was, but they were not. Sublimate is built on the opposite premise: one AI identity model, one person, trained in under a day, producing a compounding asset that the model subject controls. If the creatives and brands we serve do not trust us first, there is no point in asking anyone else for money.
Consent is our engine. Our highest-value asset isn’t our technology; it’s our subjects’ consent. That means we need to bring partners and investors to the table who care about preserving and strengthening that trust. Holding this position sets up Sublimate to grow responsibly and sustainably — ultimately putting the company in the best position to deliver for its investors over the long term.
Build for quality — then scale. We have worked on moonshots. We understand what that pursuit requires and we respect it. However, before you can ever get to a moonshot you have to deliver what your customers need and do it well. In our case, that means delivering precise, secure, responsibly-trained models and white-glove services to world-class creatives, brands, and athletes. That’s our first priority.
In the end, our goal is to give ourselves as much flexibility to work at the top of our field so that our clients can expand the rewards they earn from being at the top of theirs.
