illustration
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The Company That Owns the Pen
Wacom's battery-free pen quietly became the default input device for professional digital art - and the invisible layer inside other companies' screens. Here is how a Japanese firm turned one idea about a stylus into a category it still dominates.
Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning community where creatives learn by doing. Through tens of thousands of project-based video classes taught by working professionals - in illustration, design, photography, film, marketing, music and more - the New York-based platform turns a flat monthly subscription into access to a library built and taught by practitioners rather than academics. Founded in 2010, it has grown into one of the largest creative learning marketplaces in the world.
Domestika
Domestika is a global learning platform for creatives - illustrators, designers, photographers, animators, writers - built around professionally produced video courses and an enormous community of working professionals. Founded in Spain in 2002 as a forum, it became a unicorn in 2022 and now hosts millions of students taking courses in more than 10 languages.
Wirestock
Wirestock is a two-sided marketplace that connects 700,000+ photographers, videographers, illustrators, and 3D artists with AI labs that need ethically-sourced, high-quality multimodal training data. After pivoting from stock-content distribution in 2023, the company now supplies six of the largest foundation-model makers and is running at a $40M revenue run rate.