SABJ's monthly "Startup Spotlight" highlights founders and new businesses cropping up in the region.
In the fall of 2017, Cayce Harris woke up in the middle of the night after a dream about building a new kind of social media app.
A social media connoisseur, Cayce had noticed two things: First, most apps were tailored to a specific age demographic. They typically weren't intergenerational, with grandparents and grandchildren sharing stories and interacting, for example. Second, most were very transient and weren't necessarily intended to chronicle stories or life experiences in a more permanent way.
Cayce said she had a million videos and photos on her iCloud, but they were disorganized and it was hard to know which ones she might want to curate or single out to preserve for her kids — and that's where the idea for Curate, the app she co-founded with her husband Joel Harris, came to be.
In early 2020, the couple started seeking out developers to build the early prototype and working on designs and interfaces.
In the Curate app, users create "pods" of family or friends. Pods can either be private, viewable only to members, or public. The app is primarily video-based — users share brief, under two-minute videos with others in their "pod" — whether they're telling a story about their childhood, talking about their day or just saying hello to faraway family members. Users can attach photos to their storytelling videos for reference. (For instance, if telling a story about your late grandmother, you can create your video then attach several photos of her as a young woman.)
It's also prompt-driven, with a prompt of the day, such as asking, "What were you afraid of as a child?"
Later in 2020, the idea won the Geekdom Community Fund, and the Harrises put the $25,000 prize toward upgrading the the functionality of the pods.
In December 2021, the couple formally launched the app. Since then, more than 1,000 new users have downloaded Curate. Cayce continues to work in her day job as executive director of One San Antonio, a nonprofit focused on trauma healing and leadership development, and her husband is a management consultant.
The app is free for either the first 20 videos or for the first two pods you create, and $4.99 a month or $44.95 a year afterwards. About 10% of its current users are currently "superusers," or paying users.
Cayce said they are not currently taking outside capital and are focused on a more organic growth.
By the end of 2022, she hopes to have 10,000 active users of the app, retaining at least 10% as paid users, and then focus more on marketing and expanding.
"We want it to be a product that's used in every household," she said.
The startup: Curate, a social media app where users can share videos and pictures
Founded: January 2020
Home base: San Antonio
Founders: Cayce and Joel Harris
Milestone: Curate won the $25,000 grand prize in the Geekdom Community Fund competition in 2020.
Goal: To have 10,000 active users of the app by the end of 2022
