Smartphones allow people to take endless photos every day. But that can actually make it harder to actually go back and look through your memories. GoodOnes aims to solve this problem by separating worthwhile photos from all the rest in your phone’s memory. Read about the unique offering below in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Offers a photo organizer app.
Business Niche
Providing a fun, easy experience.
Co-founder and CEO Iz Shalom told Small Business Trends, “There are many other photo apps in the app store that help you save storage space. But GoodOnes is the only one that helps you create a healthy habit of curating your camera roll by making it fun, painless and Ollie is around to cheer you on. It’s not (just) about saving storage space, it’s about saving memories.”
How the Business Got Started
To put business experience to good use.
Shalom was previously a product exec working in personal storage at Dropbox and Google. But he noticed that his own photos were a mess.
Specifically, his mother mentioned that she wanted to see more photos in the family’s WhatsApp chat. But he found it difficult to sort through which to send, because it’s so hard to separate the good ones from all the receipts, screenshots, and duplicates.
Shalom then partnered with Aparna Pande, an entrepreneur and former exec at Disney. Since she had experience marketing to families, they decided to work together to solve this problem.
Biggest Win
Raising venture funding.
Shalom says, “Thankfully we were able to raise our round quickly. We were fortunate to find multiple investors who were interested, finished quickly, and ended up with a fantastic set of investors who share our vision and enthusiasm around this space.”
Lesson Learned
Get your offering out quickly.
Shalom adds, “??I feel like almost every venture backed entrepreneur says that, but I wish we were more widely-available sooner. We wanted to get it perfect so we spent five months behind closed doors on a private beta, onboarding every single user by hand. It gave us a trove of insights and we were more polished once we came out of the gate, but in retrospect we could have learned some lessons sooner if we just took the plunge and went out to the public beta sooner.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Marketing and growth.
Shalom explains, “We find that once people start using us they get hooked, so we need to spread the word.”
Company Mascot
Ollie.
Shalom says, “He is a super helpful octopus that can juggle many tasks at the same time and helps you organize your photos and Ollie cheers you on during the process.”
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Image: GoodOnes, Israel Shalom and Aparna Pande
