Introducing: Practice
A startup helping people discover and nurture their creative hobbies to create joy
I’ve spent the last few weeks sharing the origin story and some of the theories behind the startup I’m co-founding, and today I’m excited to formally introduce you all to Practice (practicemaking.com).
Our goal is to help people create a joyful creative practice.
Why Practice?
We are living through an epidemic of burnout and stress, and there’s a simple antidote: creative hobbies. They help people get into flow state, experience joy, and feel accomplished. Creative making is self-care, after all.
We believe that all humans are inherently creative beings capable of producing joy, awe, and beauty.
We started Practice because we believe
being creative is critical to society’s happiness & future.
Who Practice is for
We intend to serve two customer segments at launch:
1. Hobby Seekers
These are the folks who are actively seeking a new creative hobby and interested in shifting some of their consumption to creation. They want something to do other than endless scrolling, but aren’t sure where to start. Take a quick gander at r/hobbies to see the daily deluge of people asking for help finding the right hobby for them.
2. Creative Hobbyists
There are millions of adults in the US who already have a creative hobby and are reaping the benefits of their focused handwork. However, they don’t have a place to share and log their hobby sessions, connect with other hobbyists, and easily see their progress over time. Instagram, Reddit, and hobby-specific forums can get them part of the way there, but those tools aren’t really built with the hobbyist in mind, and algorithms and platform norms aren’t exactly conducive to building a joyful creative practice.
Bonus (future) segment: 3. Enrichment Seekers
There’s also a third group that we believe could really benefit from creative making, who we’re calling “Enrichment Seekers.” They don’t have a creative hobby and aren’t seeking one out, but they are interested in finding something that brings them more joy in their lives. They may not identify as creative (yet) and they don’t know or believe that a creative hobby could enrich their lives. While our impact could be huge for this segment, we anticipate that this will be the hardest group for us to serve, so we intend to go after those folks in the future (and not in the short term).
What they’ll get from Practice
For the Hobby Seekers out there, we are building a creative hobby matching tool that will help them find their perfect hobby. These recommendations will be coupled with specific projects tailored to the Hobby Seeker’s skill level + interests, with the intent of increasing the likelihood they get some joy from their new hobby, right off the bat. As we continue building out Practice, it won’t just recommend hobbies, we will also help hobbyists develop their craft, learn new skills, and make sure they don’t get bored or frustrated.
Existing Creative Hobbyists (and the Hobby Seekers we’ll convert into Creative Hobbyists) will have access to purpose-built tools to help them track, nurture, and elevate their creative practice. Borrowing from existing patterns for tracking meditation, physical exercise, and prescription compliance, we will help people build lasting hobbies, set goals (if they want to), up-level skills (again, if they want to), and track their progress over time.
Why we’re excited
At the end of the day, we are trying to help people make joy and experience other benefits from their creative hobbies. We know firsthand—and through scientific research—that creative making creates joy, so we intend to monitor the amount of Joy created because of Practice (TBD on how we measure this) along with more classic success measures. It may sound a bit cheesy, but honestly: creating joy is what makes us so passionate and excited about Practice’s potential.
If we’re successful, Practice will help people:
build an easy, meditative creative practice
spend less time on screens, breaking cycles of burnout and hopelessness
change their lives for the better
Where we are today
We have done extensive research, consulted experts, and gotten feedback from advisors to hone our idea, pitch, and strategies. We’ve developed a preliminary website, with more coming soon.
We have the beginning of our hobby match and have built a tracking tool prototype that we are hardening for early alpha testing. If you’re interested in being part of our first wave of users, please join our waitlist.
We’re super early in our journey and bootstrapping for now. We want to get more market signals before seeking funding to accelerate growth.
Okay, so…who’s the “we”?
Practice is comprised of me, Erica Meade, and my (currently) silent co-founder, Ben. He’s silent because he has a full-time job outside of Practice, but has been a critical part of the team, starting from when he texted me saying “Have you figured out hobbies as a service yet?” after we had coffee a few months ago. We met in art school over 20 years ago. He is a product guy who came to tech through health care, where he previously worked as an EMT and RN. His experience in health tech (specifically in the mental health, weight loss, and behavior change space) has brought a great perspective to Practice. And he can make a mean tiny robot.
We are also partnering with amazing designers and technical leaders in our network who are fired up about our vision and helping us build Practice. I am so appreciative of all the folks who have offered a hand by sharing their advice, expertise, and time!
If you’re interested in shaping the future of Practice, email us at info@practicemaking.com
