Imagine yourself at the last wedding you attended.
The event probably had at least one, maybe even two, professional photographers or videographers. But it also had another hundred or so people taking pictures and video, sometimes (and often accidentally) capturing the best image or moment of the day. Unfortunately, those pictures and clips live on a variety of different feeds, timelines, and platforms. But what if there was a way for the bride and groom to access all of these shots, not just via a hashtag, and easily edit them together?
Paul Templar first came up with the idea for video collaboration platform Looplio, a Chicago startup that launched in 2015, while he and his mother documented Paul’s children growing up. He wanted to build a simple, intuitive platform where they could collaborate on stitching the photos together into a video, add text, imagery and sound, and send back and forth for editing. Intended to be used with equal ease by users possessing all degrees of expertise, Looplio began as a small team of Templar (a former Marine and currently on leave from medical school) and his co-founder and CMO Mike Jennings, who came from a real estate sales and investing background.
For the first seven months, the technology was outsourced for development, however, since September of last year, Paul and Mike hired for finance, operations, and creative roles – including bringing the design and development in-house.
Here's how the app works: you click one or more photos or shoot a video, then invite or challenge friends to create their own videos -- which are later stitched together into one seamless video for public or private sharing. The user interface for the app is fairly intuitive. There is a clearly demarcated section for individuals and artists to elevate their own profiles, a section dedicated to edit collaboratively and share on other social media platforms, and one similar to Instagram’s ‘Search’ or Twitter’s ‘Trending’ buttons, based on real-time, popular hashtags. But what sets Looplio apart is a “Challenges” feature – the app presents daily opportunities for its users to recreate, for example, an iconic movie scene, showcase themselves trying a specified recipe, or similar fun challenges. Completing these leads to inbuilt rewards and promotes healthy competition among users.
Looplio aims to address the very real concerns of privacy and bullying on social media right from the get-go – with plans to hire a Chief Ethics Officer as soon as the platform is rolled out
Another difference is that, while Facebook and Twitter have come under fire for being easy breeding ground for misinformation and hate speech respectively, Looplio aims to address the very real concerns of privacy and bullying on social media right from the get-go – with plans to hire a Chief Ethics Officer as soon as the platform is rolled out, Jennings told Chicago Inno in an interview.
In a traditionally strong market for B2B technology, Looplio is one of those rare Chicago startups focused solely on building a social app. They've currently raised a friends and family round and will be releasing the alpha version of their app in February, a beta version in March, and a public release in the second quarter of this year. They are actively seeking an Angel round which they plan to use for expanding their team as well as platform (Android, tablets, etc.).
(Image via Looplio)
