The Story

CEO Max Ferguson founded Lumin in a Stanford dorm room after working on Christchurch's earthquake rebuild, where he watched construction teams struggle with paper blueprints and endless email chains. Three weeks of coding later, he launched the first version of Lumin – and hit a million users within a month. Not bad for a Christchurch company taking on real-word document chaos.

The Numbers

• 120+ million users across 180 countries

• Team of 113 people spanning NZ, Australia, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore & USA 

• Built, bootstrapped, and scaled entirely from Ōtautahi Christchurch 

• A suite including Lumin PDF, Lumin Sign, and AgreementGen for seamless document collaboration

Plot Twist

From watching construction teams wrestle with paper blueprints in earthquake-damaged Christchurch to serving 120 million users globally – sometimes the best solutions come from seeing everyday frustrations and thinking "there's got to be a better way."

The Good Stuff

Their company-wide trip to Phú Quốc, Vietnam is still legendary – because when you've got a team spanning six countries, you might as well pick somewhere beautiful to bring everyone together. They make collaborating on documents and contracts simple, whether you're dealing with PDFs, digital signatures, or contract generation.

Want to get your hands on some Lumin merch? In the spirit of the season, they're giving away limited merch packs – email majella@luminpdf.com before they’re gone!

🔗 luminpdf.com | LinkedIn