How Syllabest's founder ditched digital distractions for efficiency

Feliciano Velazquez is the founder of Syllabest, a digital planner and scheduling app built for student life and beyond that helps students, professionals, families, and teams bring clarity to busy days.

Feliciano built Syllabest out of personal necessity. Balancing continuing education, professional commitments, and everyday life, he watched digital planning tools grow increasingly fragmented; so he built his own. Running a startup while holding down a full-time role also meant dealing with a steady stream of contracts, and the tool he'd been using to manage them wasn't keeping pace.

From overcomplicated to a clean system

Before Lumin, Feliciano used Adobe Acrobat for everything PDF-related. The experience, in his words, was like flying an airplane when what he needed was to drive a car.

"If I'm driving a vehicle, I don't need a thousand buttons like you would get on an airplane. I like a clean system, and that's just not there with Acrobat."

He found Lumin at the Google Next expo in Las Vegas and after a quick conversation with someone from the Lumin team, and a follow-up demo online, he signed up. A year later, and he's still using it every day.

For Syllabest, Feliciano uses the Pro plan to draft contracts and manage anything PDF-related for the business. At his other job, he uses the free version and hasn't opened Acrobat since.

"At work, they have an Acrobat subscription, and I would say don't renew it. Use Lumin instead."

Less time searching, more time working

For Feliciano, the win is efficiency and the time he gets back. With Acrobat, he estimates he spent half his time just looking for the right feature. With Lumin, he opens the app, does what he needs to do, and moves on.

"It was a pain to open. All kinds of, like, want to do this, want to do that, what about this, what about that. Efficiency, I would say, is the biggest thing."

For a solo founder trying to move fast, every minute spent hunting for the right button was a minute not spent on the actual work. His advice is simple: if you're already paying for Acrobat, don't renew it. Pay for Lumin instead.