RIT entrepreneurs spotlight artists with new social media site

While conducting customer discovery interviews for their startup company, RIT students Angel Yang and Rylan Ganeko quickly recognized a recurring theme: artists are experiencing social media fatigue. 

It was the confirmation Yang ’22 (medical illustration), ’25 MFA (visual communication design) and Ganeko ’27 (marketing) needed as they co-founded Spotlight Creators, a new social media site uniquely made to activate a creative, authentic community for artists.

“We want artists to feel the freedom to post their work and have healthy critiques,” said Yang, from Shanghai, China. “Most artists were like, ‘Yeah I’m struggling with social media. I want to be seen, I want a community.’”

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Spotlight Creators aims to be a portfolio showcase where artists can post their work without the pressures of maintaining priority in an algorithm.

With Spotlight Creators, the startup team aims to filter out ubiquitous, trend-chasing social media content in favor of original artwork that, Yang and Ganeko feel, doesn’t currently have appropriate visibility. Many interviewed artists, they said, feel pressure to produce disingenuous social media posts for their accounts to remain relevant within platform algorithms. 

Spotlight Creators is a site squarely positioned to shine a bright light on artist users.

“We’re in the age of content creation,” said Ganeko, from Pearl City, Hawaii. “It’s like you have to create and post something every single day. You can’t really make quality anything if you’re not putting the time and effort into making something worthwhile. In art, especially, it can take months, even years, to create that one special piece. So we want to give the artists less time constraint to when and what they post. This platform is to address that primary issue.”

Spotlight Creators recently had a soft launch as it goes through alpha testing. The company can also be followed on Instagram at @thespotlightcreators.

Users are welcomed by a clean-looking site with a familiar look and feel of other social media apps they may have used. Spotlight Creators acts as a compact portfolio showcase where artists can post their projects and latest explorations as well as their upcoming exhibitions and events. 

There is also an “Artist’s Journey” section on profiles that outlines an artist’s creation process.

“Being artists, you usually only see our finished work. But no one ever asks, ‘How did you make this happen?’” said Yang, who led the site’s design vision. “That’s why we have this journey where you can document what happened during the process with dates, description, and maybe even your color palette, to show people this authenticity.”

Yang and Ganeko met in the Applied Entrepreneurship class offered through RIT’s Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 

The initial idea of a relationship app changed and evolved based on early customer interviews that helped identify market needs. From there, the interdisciplinary team of designers, developers, and business-minded individuals graduated to the Bernard Kozel StartUP Program @ Saunders last summer to continue research, prototyping, and investment seeking for Spotlight Creators. 

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The "Artist's Journey" feature is a user's chance to document and show their creative process.

“It’s very hands-on learning,” Ganeko said. “You’re not just sitting in a classroom. You’re encouraged to get out there, get into the community, and go find your potential customers.”

The other startup team members are Jose-Francisco Palomino Lau Master ’26 (software engineering), Maksim Pikovskiy ’24 (computer science), and visual communication design students Andrew Lee ’25, Lisa Song ’25, and Zion Xu ’25. 

The Spotlight Creators team conducted around 150 interviews with artists in the Rochester community and in RIT’s College of Art and Design to gauge their appetite for an artist-friendly social media space. There was an overwhelmingly positive response.

To gain additional insights and fix bugs, the startup has also consulted with the artists at Muck Duck Studio, a brick-and-mortar creative community in Rochester.

“I believe in always thinking outside the box and challenging the norms,” Yang said of her inspiration to go down this entrepreneurial path. “Learning that I don't enjoy the whole 9-5 schedule, that prompted me to pursue grad school. Once I figured out there was a problem we could solve, that pushed me to give back to the artist community.”