01 / THE BACKSTORY
An architect’s eye.
A founder’s instinct.
CARL THOMAS
FOUNDER / CEO / ARCHITECT
Architecture taught me to deliver the whole building design end to end and care obsessively about every detail. Building miPic has tested that discipline in product, people and the decisions you have to own as a founder.
Before the platform,
there was a market stall.
It began with art and photography while I was studying to become an architect. Evenings and weekends were spent designing prints, editing photographs and finding ways to support my studies.
In 2007, I opened my first art shop in Liverpool. Saturday mornings meant stretching and framing canvas prints on my mum’s living room floor, with a staple gun and a hammer. Sorry, Mum.
The alarm would ring at 5am on Sundays. I’d arrive loaded with canvas prints and dreams of one day opening a full-time art shop in London.
Same instinct.
A very different build.
By 2013, I was working as an architect in London. But the idea had grown: a printing platform that could help creatives around the world turn their photography and artwork into an income.
What started as three guys working from our bedrooms became miPic. Three months after our beta launch, I was standing in front of Richard Branson with a microphone and a life-changing 90 second pitch. We won Virgin’s Pitch to Rich Innovation and People's Choice Awards.
Since then, the story has included crowdfunding, angel investment, international investors, growing a team and all the things you don’t put in the pitch deck.
miPic 2.0 launches.
Not a first time founder any more.
Following integration of agentic engineering in Q2, miPic has delivered a 4 year roadmap and reduced operational expenditure by 95% allowing the team to build and launch product features at pace.
Our mission is to empower creatives with one end to end platform, a new home for photographers and artists to easily create, sell and earn.
The product has a real opportunity to scale and reach the expectations I demand and scale our existing customers located in 81 countries.
Launch Android
Bring miPic to more creators with an Android app, expanding access across mobile markets.
AI image generation
Turn a prompt into original artwork and create physical print products with it.
miPic PRO
Personalised creator stores, higher artist commissions and AI credits in one subscription.
New surface commerce / B2B
Bring miPic stores and print commerce into other websites through embedded storefronts.
THE STANDARD I BUILD TO
Understand the whole.
Care about the detail.
Before miPic’s first interface, I studied the marketplaces people already used and sketched hundreds of screens on graph paper. That is the architect in me: understand how something works, then work through the details until it works better for the person using it.
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