The idea started in 2014 at Carrboro High School. Jake Zinn, a Chapel Hill native, said the concept that would become Beepr Inc. was simple.
“I wanted information that I loved to come to me without me having to scroll and search through social media and the internet,” he said.
The idea stayed in the back of his head after graduation and while he attended the College of Charleston for arts management.
“I realized that this idea … it can be a working app,” Zinn said.
So he started building the app in 2018 while still a college student. The soft launch hit in 2020. The result was an app that provides instant alerts – or “beeps” – for new music from your favorite artists.
It was tough going, Zinn said. The now-four person team bootstrapped its way through app development by funneling in personal savings. To pay his team members, Zinn started consulting with other startups on how to grow their own app downloads.
Real validation came in the form of Tech Stars, an entrepreneurship accelerator that picked Beepr as one of 10 music startups for its program. The accelerator also writes its startups checks. Add in some angel investment, and Beepr had its first outside round of capital, at more than $200,000, according to securities filings that dropped April 4.
Today, the app has more than 300,000 registered users, with about 10,000 people using the app each day, Zinn says.
Users download the app, then search for their favorite artist. They can then opt in for notifications – such as when Taylor Swift releases a new album, tour dates or when her new merchandise is out.
Right now, the app centers on music. But Zinn’s vision is for the notification system to one day extend to books, TV shows, gaming, sports and news – “where anything you love is brought directly to the front of your screen via a beep.”
Today, it’s free. But long-term, Zinn imagines Beepr evolving into a subscription service, a $2 monthly fee offering users the convenience “to never have to search for information on the internet that they already know they want.”
“We live in a world of just content overload,” he said. “We’re fighting unwanted notifications, unwanted advertisements as we Google search or scroll on Twitter or Instagram … and our goal is to find information and news that we already know that we want, so what we’re trying to do is save our users time.”
Zinn is now located in Charlotte, though the firm is headquartered in Chapel Hill. When it raises its next funding round, he hopes to get Triangle investors on board, he said.