Lara Velez
Co-Founder & CTO
Studied computer science while teaching at a community school. Now leads the 18-person engineering team.
Rethinking software for everyday school life.
One platform instead of ten half-baked tools.
In numbers
What we have achieved since 2020
4,000
Teachers work on the platform every day
65,000
Students learn with Lumen
120+
Schools across DACH
How Lumen came to be
In spring 2020, schools closed overnight. Three Hamburg teachers — Anne Lindholm, Marek Schöne and Lara Velez — improvised like everyone else with email lists and PDFs. Out of the frustration came an idea: don’t build the twelfth tool for schools, build the one that makes all the others obsolete.
What started as a weekend initiative became Lumen Schools in summer 2020. Today 35 people from education, product and technology work on it in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel. In 2023, Lumen was funded in a seed round of roughly 4 million euros by early EdTech investors.
“We’re building Lumen because we refuse to accept that teachers spend half their working hours on admin — instead of with the children they want to be there for. Schools don’t need software layered on top. They need one that makes ten others obsolete.”
Looking for teammates — Lumen keeps growing.
Lumen currently has four open positions in product development and customer success. Career changers from schools and education administration are explicitly welcome.
Team
From schools, for schools
Investors & partners
Who we build Lumen with
Lumen in daily life
Impressions from schools and the office
Classrooms where Lumen is used every day. Teacher workshops and the Hamburg office in Schanzenviertel.
