Three and a half years ago, Rocketbook co-founders Joe Lemay and Jake Epstein were laughed off of "Shark Tank." The "sharks" were unimpressed with their product, a cloud-integrated, reusable notebook that takes content written by hand on its pages and uploads it to the internet.
As Epstein recalls, Rocketbook was viewed as a novelty, even though he and Lemay were pursuing the very real goal of bringing notebooks into the digital age, and doing so sustainably.
Now, Lemay and Epstein are selling their business — which they've grown into a 38-person startup with $32 million in net sales this year — to Bic Corp., the 75-year old consumer manufacturing company whose name is synonymous with ballpoint pens and lighters. Bic is paying $40 million for the six-year-old startup, with the potential for more milestone payments down the line.
It is, in a word, "surreal," Epstein said.
"We had some conversations a few months back with Bic, and it really became clear that we both had a similar vision for the future of what it meant to be writing by hand, the future of digital handwriting," Lemay said. "Things started to move along, and we realized together we could join forces and build Rocketbook into an amazing, futuristic brand."
Lemay and Epstein were not looking for an exit strategy at this time last year. Instead, the Techstars Boston veterans were cruising along, powering their startup largely with direct sales. Rocketbook even partnered with Amazon to launch the Rocketbook Fusion notebook, which premiered as a Prime Day exclusive, last spring.
Rocketbook sells to students and teachers as well as to corporate professionals. Boston Scientific was one of the first companies to place a business order in September 2015. Since then, General Electric Co., Stripe, Facebook, Airbnb, HubSpot, Microsoft and Google have all hopped onboard. Appropriately, even NASA has bought Rocketbooks for its employees, Lemay and Epstein told BostInno in an interview last year.
For the founders, that's proof of concept that Rocketbook products have a permanent place in the future of office and school supplies.
"There's anxiety in, 'How can I justify continuing to write with a pen, paper, marker, pencil, you name it, as we live more and more in the digital age?'" Lemay said.
The Rocketbook team is planning a slew of new products in 2021, including cards, a smart whiteboard, a new version of the original Rocketbook notebook and a new digital app that works with all of the startup's physical products. The company is also upgrading the functionality of those products with optical character recognition, smart lists and note structure.
Rocketbook will operate as an independent subsidiary of Bic, and there will be no cuts to its workforce with the acquisition. In fact, Rocketbook is currently hiring for roles on the digital product and engineering teams.
In many ways, Rocketbook is a classic Boston startup success story. Epstein and Lemay's idea for a reusable notebook began on the back of a napkin at Sligo Pub in Somerville six years ago. In 2015, Rocketbook raised more than $1.3 million during an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for the Rocketbook Wave, its first notebook. The startup graduated from Techstars Boston the following year, then made its "Shark Tank" appearance in 2017. And although Rocketbook emerged from the tank unfunded, it began to scale rapidly after that, ultimately earning it one of BostInno's 50 on Fire awards last year.
Now, Epstein and Lemay plan to leverage Bic's 75-year heritage to transform the market for classroom and office supplies.
"Not a lot is going to change except for our speed and success in the market," Lemay said. "With BIC, we really just feel like we’re getting started to building a multibillion-dollar brand."
