It's 11pm. An illustrator finishes a project — three weeks of work, something they're genuinely proud of. Now comes the part nobody talks about.
They upload it to Behance, write the case study, tag the project. Then they head to Instagram to post a teaser, with a link in bio nobody clicks. Then they switch to Notion to update the client tracker. Then to Wave to send the invoice. Then to their email to follow up on that other project that went quiet last week.
By midnight they've updated six different tools, none of which talk to each other, and the actual work is buried somewhere in the middle of it all.
This isn't a niche problem. Every working creative professional knows this feeling. It has a name: the fragmentation tax. And we built komake because we got tired of paying it.
The Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
The creative industry has been handed an impossible setup. To work as an artist online today, you're expected to maintain a portfolio site, a social presence, a client management system, and an invoicing workflow — usually across four or five completely separate products, each designed by someone who didn't think about how the others would fit together.
Behance gives you a portfolio but no social layer. Instagram gives you an audience but buries your work behind an algorithm you can't control. Contra or Fiverr gives you a marketplace but strips out your creative identity in favor of gig listings. Squarespace gives you a beautiful site but no community. Notion gives you project management but no way to present yourself to the world.
The result is that creative professionals spend a disproportionate amount of their time being account managers for their own careers — updating, cross-posting, following up, maintaining — instead of making work.
And the money side is just as fragmented. Add Calendly for booking, Wave or FreshBooks for invoicing, and maybe a separate contract tool, and you're looking at real monthly costs just to keep the infrastructure running. The average working freelance creative is spending $80–150 per month on tools that should be one tool.
The Algorithm Trap
Beyond the fragmentation, there's a more insidious problem: artists have handed the ownership of their online presence to platforms that don't care about them.
Instagram optimizes for engagement, not for artwork. The shift to video-first has been brutal for illustrators, painters, and anyone whose best work doesn't fit in a 15-second reel. Posting consistently, using the right hashtags, going live, doing collabs — none of it guarantees your audience even sees your work anymore. The algorithm serves the platform, not the creator.
Behance had a golden era. It doesn't anymore. ArtStation is excellent for game-industry professionals but narrow by design. DeviantArt has spent years trying to figure out what it is. Twitter/X has become unpredictable.
None of these platforms give artists ownership. You can't control how your profile looks. You can't control who sees your work or when. You can't port your audience if the platform changes its rules tomorrow — which they always do.
The fundamental promise of the internet for creators — that they could build an independent presence and own it — has been quietly broken by every platform that grew large enough to have shareholders.
Why We Built komake
We're artists and builders who've lived this problem. We've had the 11pm moment. We've lost clients because a DM got buried. We've rebuilt a portfolio from scratch because a platform changed its algorithm and all our traffic disappeared. We've looked at the landscape and thought: someone should fix this. Then we realized we should.
komake started from a single conviction: creatives deserve a platform that works for them, not one they have to work around.
That means portfolio and social presence in one place, so your work and your audience exist in the same context, not split across two accounts on two platforms. It means customization deep enough to feel like your space — we're talking real HTML and CSS control over your profile, not just a choice between three color themes. It means tools for the actual work: client communication, project milestones, invoicing. And it means discoverability that isn't dependent on whether you posted at the right time or went viral last week.
The vision is a creative professional's entire online life in one place, with the flexibility to make it look and feel exactly the way they want it to.
What We're Building Right Now
The MVP is focused on the foundation: profiles and the social layer.
When you join komake, you get a profile that's yours. You can populate it with your work — images, video, case studies — and style it with actual HTML and CSS, the same way people used to customize their MySpace pages or their early Tumblr blogs. Creative professionals should be able to make their portfolio look creative, not just template it.
On top of that is the social layer: the ability to follow artists you admire, share work, engage with the community, and build an audience that doesn't disappear the next time an algorithm changes. Your followers are your followers. You own that relationship.
This is what's coming in the first version. But it's just the start.
Where We're Going
The MVP is about the creative identity — your portfolio, your presence, your community. The next phase brings in the tools for the actual work.
We're building the client management layer: project timelines, milestones, communication threads, and invoicing — all inside the same platform where your portfolio lives. No more context switching between your professional face and your operational backend.
After that, the discovery layer: making it possible for brands, agencies, and studios to search komake for the right creative — by style, by discipline, by location, by availability. Discovery built on real work, not on how often you post.
The long-term vision is straightforward: every tool a creative professional needs to build a career online, in one place, owned by them. Not rented from an algorithm. Not split across five subscriptions. Theirs.
This Is for the Artist Who's Tired of Working Around the Tools
If you've ever rebuilt a portfolio because a platform changed on you. If you've ever lost track of a client conversation because it was split across email and DMs. If you've ever felt your work disappear into an algorithmic feed that stopped showing it to anyone. If you've ever looked at your monthly SaaS bill and thought I'm spending more on keeping my career organized than I spent on art school — this is for you.
komake is in early access. We're building with a small cohort of artists who want to shape what it becomes — and the waitlist is open now.
We'd love to hear what you're building. And we can't wait to give you a place to show it.
komake is building the first platform where artists can portfolio, socialize, and manage their creative career — all in one place. Built by creators, for creators.