Shep Harmon knew years ago that he had come up with a service that would be vital to clients and popular enough to have a wide appeal.
Scaling his business — called POM (Piece of Mind) Vault — to the point where it could be widely available instead of being just one guy with a scanner was where he needed help.
The service Harmon sells from his office in World Golf Village allows people to store all of their personal documents, photos, videos or anything else that can be digitized on a personal secure cloud server.
"I set out to solve a problem for older folks like me because dealing with aging issues and death, affairs get very messy, even if you have wills and trusts and advanced directives," Harmon said.
What makes POM Vault unique from other cloud services is its security and the way the user can allow very specific permission for others to view certain files without divulging the entire cache.
For instance, a client can allow their accountant access to tax/financial documents in one folder but not anything else. The same person can grant a cousin access to family photo albums that were scanned and saved, but he or she can't see the client's personal documents.
It's also a searchable personal database that can house as much or as little information as the user desires. And it's maintained for $125 per year (for the standard service).
"We've given structure to the online warehouse," Harmon said. "(And) there's no limitation to what you can share with family."
Harmon, who has three decades of experience in the financial sector, including 20 years in private equity, started his business in 2017. He would charge about $600 to get a client started, often spending an hour just scanning and saving documents.
While some people still need that service, most clients can simply use a website to sign up and upload documents themselves.
For the last year, Harmon has been working with 5canons in Jacksonville. They developed a website and created the vault on top of a platform made by FileCloud.
Harmon said he was confident using FileCloud because they have 3,000 business and government customers and more than a million users.
"I spoke with one of the key employees about my needs," Harmon said. "They were very excited about the concept as they never had anyone adapt it for individuals. They offer to work closely with my development team and get it done."
Once Harmon got his business going, he realized that he needed some guidance and reached out to the UNF Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the fall of 2019.
Although it was too late to join that cohort, he was referred to Laura Guillaume, the assistant director. She assisted with a business plan, and Harmon lined up some investment to go forward.
Now that the software is optimized, Harmon is looking to raise more capital — about $500,000 — as he launches the product on a national scale. He thinks it can be the kind of product offered through companies' human resources departments as part of a benefits package. Or financial planners of accountants or attorneys might want to offer POM Vault in a package of their services.
Harmon said professionals in those industries who have examined POM Vault have come away impressed. Now ready to hire people to grow the product, Harmon thinks he just has to get exposure to more potential clients for the product to take off.
"All I need to do is execute this," he said.
