Lydia White, Design Lead, Beme | EP 176 HackToStart

Lydia White is a Design Lead at Beme, an independent, and wildly ambitious technology+media company bringing a wider range of perspectives to the news that was cofounded by YouTuber Casey Neistat & Matt Hackett.

Lydia started her design career with an academic background in fine art and photography, but growing up she had the chance to learn a lot from her dad. Later Lydia started her career as a developer at agencies, before moving into a dedicated design role.

After moving to the East coast and freelancing for a few years, Lydia eventually joined the team at Tumblr where she had the chance to work on some big projects that had a big impact on the evolution of the platform and it’s community as Tumblr made the move to mobile.

Lydia was later recruited to join the small team at Beme, where she’s helping to change the way news stories are told and delivered. Through new products like Panols, Beme is creating a unique and youthful blend of technology and storytelling.

Lydia joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she created the opportunity to join the team at Tumblr, what it was like building a user research team there, some of the challenges they faced as they moved into mobile, what it was like joining the team at Beme, some of the early challenges in building an entirely new type of company, and much more.