Atlanta entrepreneur Anthony Joiner is building a platform that could help more than a few people with their New Year’s resolutions.
His subscription software startup Blooksy is a collaborative publishing platform that guides and aids authors through the workflow of starting, writing and editing their books.
Joiner launched the first product geared toward nonfiction books last March and has gained some early traction. He won Atlanta-based Panoramic Ventures’ Startup Showdown pitch competition, cinching a $120,000 investment and the venture capital firm’s resources and support.
Joiner has a five-person development team, project manager and a couple of customer support employees. Other than the pitch competition win, he has bootstrapped the startup so far.
Joiner is hesitant to raise investments. Though he isn’t new to software development or book writing, the venture world is another story. As a Black founder, he says he feels more pressure to succeed. That’s why he’s still building out the Blooksy software before taking investments — He wants a provable, scalable product before he tries to get funded.
“If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never done it before, and you’re a person of color, it makes it a lot harder for investors to trust the business,” Joiner said.
Blooksy currently has about 200 subscribers and a pipeline of universities that could become enterprise customers. This month, Joiner will participate in Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes A Village pre-accelerator.
Joiner started tinkering with the software that would become Blooksy in November 2020 and came out with a prototype three months later. Now, Blooksy has training materials for writers as well as a platform that allows authors to transcribe thoughts through voice-to-text and format the book into chapter segments.
Joiner has experience developing large software projects for clients such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and started a digital marketing agency for entertainers with online content. Amid these jobs, he wrote multiple books, including “Stop Bullsh*#%ng & Write Your Book!”
Eventually, he was fielding questions from aspiring writers hoping to pen their own masterpieces and hosting writing workshops. After helping more than 200 people, he realized he needed a more efficient way.
His next steps will be adding different types of writing projects, such as fiction books or dissertations. Joiner is also building out a way to allow authors to share drafts of the book with their friends and publishers for edits.
