Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the co-founder and CTO of Lottie, a rapidly growing startup focused on bringing motion graphics onto every screen on the planet.

Despite being the first company to EVER raise venture capital from their home base in the Maldives, the two Indian co-founders have managed to build a remarkable, fully remote team of 100+ in just a few short years.

Sure, it’s super early days for this clever little company, but something about them feels really special.

I’ll do my best to explain what they’ve built in a way that might get through - even if you’ve never pushed a pixel in your life.

The Potential:

If a picture is worth 1000 words (but everyone can create static images), then moving pictures must be worth a million or more.

The Problem:

Traditional methods like video, motion graphics and even most animations cost a ton, not just in terms of production time and budgets, but they also slow down the internet for everyone. Even worse, there are so many different formats that often, something that Android supports won’t show up on Apple devices and vice versa.

The Solution:

By combining the passion of designers and muscle of developers from the beginning, the Lottie team created a brand new, ultra-lightweight file format, optimised for speed and cross-platform consistency. (This means way cooler animations and faster load times, wherever you view them).

BONUS: Even better, they’ve started building a set of tools for anyone to build their very own animations, supported by a global community of developers and designers contributing rad motion graphics templates and new tools everyday.

That’s how I met this champion by the way… He’s just travelling non stop, working from the road while connecting with random people like me on Twitter and catching up to talk art, design, AI and crappy Gold Coast coffee.

Love it. Onya Lottie!