Lucid Press
Getting to know Indy Sanders
Not many 28-year-olds can say they were a professional athlete, top of their class at an elite university, an investment bank analyst, and a global business development lead and now have their own company. But Indy Sanders, founder and CEO of the tech startup Lucid, can.
"I don't think there are any barriers within someone's being or within the world that can prevent anyone from reaching the top of anything they want to achieve. I think the only prevention or blockage is your ability to push through," Sanders, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, said during a Google Meet interview with the Bay Area Reporter.
For Sanders, it's all about perseverance - and an unwavering drive to succeed.
"If you find a way, then there's always a next move. ... That's the mentality that I brought into the company," they said.
Setting the stage for entrepreneurship
While most 13-year-olds were enrolled in school and living at home with parents or caregivers, Sanders, who hails from the United Kingdom, was playing tennis at the professional level and traveling internationally on their own for matches and tournaments. Their days consisted of training for eight to nine hours and then heading to wherever they were staying, making themself something for dinner, and getting in some study time before falling asleep and doing the same routine all over again.
In terms of what Sanders gleaned from the experience, they said, "I basically was taken out of the systems that other people were in, which gave me a very different perspective on life, and I was very much trained as an athlete into this obsessive, hard-working behavior where you feel so deeply that whatever you put in you get out, and you know that mistakes are just part of the positive learning experience."
For them, those formative years yielded two key benefits. "It was a combination of not being tied to the main structures of our world that constrain people - particularly constrain their own belief in what they can achieve and do for the world - and my ability to not feel deterred by problems and [instead] be like, 'OK, let's go. What can we do next?'" Sanders said.
A spinal injury ended their tennis career, but it didn't lessen their ambition or self-discipline. Sanders pivoted from being a professional athlete to a conscientious student, enrolling in Loughborough University, a major sports university in England.
"I went there because I didn't know how to engage with normal people that didn't do sports, to be quite honest. So it was a nice transition," Sanders said.
After graduating top of their class and with a first degree (the U.S. equivalent to graduating summa cum laude) in politics, they gave law school a try, only to find it wasn't the right fit.
"Law was too much about reading and less about practical innovation using my mind," Sanders commented.
For Sanders, realizing that the career wasn't for them didn't result in giving up; instead, it prompted them to try something new: the financial-centered world of banking. Their work in the industry included joining Houlihan Lokey's mergers and acquisitions team as an investment banking analyst, going from legal books and trial practice to sourcing and making deals.
They shared, "I was looking at cool businesses across Europe and finding acquisition targets for our clients, and then starting off those M&A deals. So that was really good insight into looking at the later stage of a startup and going, 'What is an acquirable startup? What does it look like? What are the patterns of growth?'"
The analyst job was followed by work at a small tech consulting company, State of Flux, with Fortune 100 clients - but, at the time, an indiscernible sales process.
"I went in as their first-ever dedicated sales person, and I basically ripped their system to sh*t and built a proper global growth structure, selling into Microsoft, Google, Chevron - [with] deals up to the millions," said Sanders.
Their efforts resulted in the company's interest in moving Sanders from the U.K. to New York, as head of strategic growth, to run operations globally; after a few years of driving sales and business development, they were ready to branch out on their own, with the idea of Lucid in mind.
Pushing the boundaries
Once downloading the free Lucid app via the Apple Store and opening it, a soon-to-be-user sees the wording "Enter Lucid". From there, the approximately 5-minute onboarding involves a personality assessment, featuring nine prompts, including "If you were an emoji..." and selecting one of a dozen featured emoji (e.g., peach, fire, crying yellow face); "You move into a new apartment ... What's the first thing you buy?" with paint, lights, speakers, sofa, or plants as one of the possible responses; and "You have more than 30 ..." with the five options being books, tattoos, shoes, succulents, and bottles of alcohol.
"We really started honing in on exactly what people wanted, and then we uncovered, 'Oh, it's not just a content play here. It's how do you connect people to content in a more meaningful way, and how do you integrate it into their lives in a habitual way that they don't have to make an effort towards, which is where all of our AI came in," explained Sanders about the app's development.
Post-personality assessment, the user can also have a conversation Lucid's AI "ghost" - with the interactions serving as a means to further personalize their experience.
"You can say, 'Hey, I'm feeling pretty low. I'm a Pisces. My partner just broke up with me. Help me elevate myself this evening, and lift my mood up and show me that there's a reason to have faith in the universe today.' And it will give you conversational reasoning as to what it's curating for you and why, and then it presents it to you," Sanders said.
"We curate, not by genre, but by emotive. Like, 'Does this content deliver some kind of emotive impact?' And if it does, then we like it. We typically are doing the stuff other people aren't doing, and we like that. We don't want to be copycats of Netflix - we're very different from them," Sanders explained.
And then there's the palpable interest in Lucid from hotel groups, social clubs, and venues looking to amp up their spaces' visual displays.
The positive reception to Lucid extends to recognitions such as a South by Southwest (SXSW) 2024 conference award that Sanders nabbed for "best speed pitch in media and entertainment." Sanders and Stewart were also selected in "Forbes 30 under 30 North America 2025" list, which recognizes the business achievements of individuals under age 30.
The right mentality goes a long way
"It's definitely harder being queer as a founder - fundamentally, ridiculously harder. I thought I could beat the odds, and in some ways I do." said Sanders.
Lucid does, however, have certain major venture capital investors - including Antler, based in Singapore, and New York City-headquartered Techstars. According to Sanders, they raised $400,000 from these VCs, as well as from angel investors, including Max Roman, an ex-product lead at Netflix. They're currently involved in a fundraising round "to fuel scaled growth" that will carry over into 2025.
Lucid's investors are not only financially backing the company but also articulating support for Sanders' ideas and work ethic.
"Indy is one of the most focused entrepreneurs I've ever encountered in my career. That, combined with their ability to learn incredibly fast, makes them just outrageously effective and able to execute quickly," said Roman, a self-described "frequent and enthusiastic ally," in an email to the B.A.R.
His sentiments about Sanders' skill set and leadership qualities parallel that of Antler's general partner, Jeff Becker:
"Indy is a force. They are maniacal about the details that matter, an exceptional operator, and someone with top 1% resilience. This is the type of founder you always back," wrote Becker in a comment Sanders shared with the B.A.R.
Lucid team members conveyed views of Sanders' along the same lines as Lucid's investors.
"As CEO Indy strikes the perfect balance. They've built an inclusive, energetic workplace culture where exploration and spontaneity are encouraged, while also modeling really incredible work ethic, drive, adaptability and creativity," Gibbons, who identifies as cis and straight, wrote in an Instagram message to the B.A.R.
"I think Indy's unconventional path into this industry has made them a particularly resilient and driven founder, who also really cares about unlocking the potential of every member of their team," she added.
Stewart described Sanders, her partner, as "incredibly strategic," assessing it as a way of being derived from Sanders' years on the court, racket in hand. "They can distill any problem affecting any area of the business into simple facts and quickly outline an efficient and effective solution that aligns with wider business goals. They push the team to be nimble and always embrace continuous innovation," Stewart said.
For Sanders, the life lessons learned from sports carry over to their approach to running a company.
"Your odds of winning a race are not defined by where you start in the race and what your odds are at the starting line. The odds are going to change at every single point along the way because other people are going to drop out. So the one thing you know for certain is, if you continue and you are one of the final people, your odds are going to be better, and you will have a much higher chance of succeeding," they said.
"I think that that mentality kind of pulls you through every moment," Sanders added.
