Miri Buckland and Ellie Buckingham are both in business school at Stanford. They joke that they are like the right and left sides of the brain. When they got their diplomas in 2019, they put their minds together to start a new social media platform.
Buckingham said, “We’ve always cared a lot about the idea of encouraging creativity and the idea that creativity isn’t something you’re either born with or you’re not.” “It’s something you can work on.”
When it first went public on the stock market in April of that year, Pinterest was worth $10 billion. It had been around for seven years. The site was counting on the fact that millennials like to pick out their perfect lunches, outfits, and even lives.
As you look through Landing, you’ll see vision boards from users that are funny, silly, and even out of this world. They talk about things like their New Year’s resolutions and their dream wedding with musician Harry Styles.
The founders of Landing said that Gen Z women, who make up between 80% and 90% of the platform’s users, describe it as “Pinterest, but with a community.” Where Pinterest encourages people to find images on their own, Landing encourages people to find images together by letting users share, comment on, and like each other’s boards.
The boards can also be used to buy things. Users can move their mouse over items that interest them and then follow the steps to buy them.
Every day, a lot of new boards are made on the site. Buckland, a full-fledged millennial, said in August that while millennials might make one or two boards for their dream house, “Gen Z-ers manifest constantly.” The founders said that they didn’t expect Gen Z to make vision boards as quickly as they do.
Putting together a vision board is like making a list of goals, keeping a journal, or sending yourself a note of encouragement. By putting these boards next to each other, Landing becomes a visual way for its users to talk about their plans, worries, and hopes for the future. Even if users don’t share the same culture or language, they will still bond.
A 23-year-old woman from Mexicali, Mexico, named Xiomara Vega told Insider that she writes down her goals for the new year on a board every year. She said she puts it as the background on her phone so it will always remind her of who she wants to be.
A Landing user from Chicago named Deyana Atanasova, who is 22 years old, told Insider, “I put a chess board on my 2022 vision board, which is funny because I got a lot better at chess this past year.”
Since Landing started in 2019, 160,000 accounts have been made, 400,000 boards have been made, and 3 million images have been uploaded. The mobile app, which is in beta right now, will come out early in 2023.
Landing’s founders won’t say much about their business plans, but they have already gotten $3 million in seed funding. This year, Buckland got a prized spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. The founders are planning ways to bring the communities growing on Landing together in real life in the coming year.
The signs of how well a platform like Landing might do right now can be seen in the tea leaves. Under Elon Musk, Twitter is having trouble figuring out who it is. Teenagers are leaving Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat. In the last decade, there have been an increasing number of opportunities for newcomers to change social media rules.
The founders say that a new social media age called “collective media” is coming.
