Smartphone Apps

Ken: Anniversary is a new mobile application for iOS that allows its users to time-target photo and video delivery to a private, customizable group. For example, it's a night out with my good friends - I take a video of my buddy making a fool of himself while singing karaoke. I then tag all those who are with me, and set it for a "week". Exactly one week later, at the exact same time the photo was sent away, all those who were tagged in the "Anniversary" receive a surprise notification in the form of a digitally-wrapped present. I then "tap to unwrap" the gift, and the app reveals the picture I sent during last week's karaoke debacle. All those tagged, including myself, are now in a private chat with the photo where we can talk about, reminisce and relive the moment all over again, together.

Ken: I was the one who came up with the name 'Anniversary'. I actually came up with it at the original conception of the idea. The name comes from this idea that the word Anniversary is used to signify and remember a moment or event that is special to us. But we never seem to give the smaller moments any kind of commemoration. What about all those special and funny moments that happen to us everyday that aren't weddings or first date's or company milestones? We think the word Anniversary is too limited in scope, and that any moment that makes us smile when we're with our friends and family deserves an Anniversary, too - and that how the name came to be.

Ben: There's a great quote we like to think about when we're stuck brainstorming: "You'll never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory" - Dr. Seuss The quote perfectly encompasses the single most important value behind the Anniversary concept, and we have to remind ourselves sometimes that this is what differentiates ourselves from all the other photo apps on the market. If you take a look at the top of the social media pyramid - apps like Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook are great communication tools to show what we are doing at a particular time. But there is a lack of personal connection. Nostalgia, in our minds, is one of the most amazing concepts behind friendships. Reminiscing about shared moments together is one of the most effective ways to bring people closer. One of the goals of Anniversary is to strengthen the bonds between friends and family, and I'd like to think we've been successful in doing that.

Ben: I think people use snapchat in order to interact with peers in the most surface-level way possible. Since your pictures disappear right away, Snapchat doesn't put a big focus on the type of content you're sharing. It's almost less about what you're sharing, and more about the idea of just interacting with someone in any way possible. With Anniversary we're hoping to deepen the social experience for our users. By reliving a memory that Anniversary brought back, it connects you to not only that moment, but to the people you shared it with as well.

Ben: Well, the interesting thing is that it wasn't a school project. Neither of us had any relationship or involvement with the business school. We had thought of the idea right before our Fall senior classes started in 2012, and we decided to just sit down in a coffee shop and begin sketching. We never had any plans for it, and we definitely didn't know what we were doing, but we knew that we had something interesting, and because of our personalities, we just kept working to see where it would take us. Someone then told us that the University could probably help with our idea, and ever since we walked in to learn more about the services, the University of Delaware's Entrepreneurial program took us under their wing and became an essential relationship for making Anniversary a reality. Preparing for that HenHatch competition in the Spring is really what caused the tipping point, changing Anniversary from an idea into a real business pursuit.

Ken: In the summer of 2012, I (Ken) was sitting around a table with a few of my high school friends. Among them were Julia and Kevin, two friends who had gone together as dates to our senior prom three years back. Someone brought up a hilarious memory from that senior prom after looking at their watch and realizing that exactly three years ago, on the same date, around the same time, Julia was left alone on the dance floor during the slow dance because her date, Kevin, was stuffing his face at the desert table. We all started to laugh because we had all been there, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with this really, unique emotion- there was something so beautiful about being together again, exactly three years later, reminiscing on a great memory that we all were a part of. And so I typed a one sentence line about the idea into my Blackberry. And when I brought it up to Ben later that Summer right before school started, he saw the potential in the idea, and we've been business partners, working together since.

Ken: I majored in English with minors in Jazz Performance, Jewish Studies, and Psychology. Ben: I majored in Psychology with a minor in Organizational and Community Leadership. Ken: Initially, the lack of knowledge was a bit of a hindrance in moving forward. But I think it also gave us a really unique approach to business strategy and problem solving in the sense that we had no fixed template. It also forced us to learn at a much faster and efficient rate that built the foundation of our current work ethic.

Ken: Because neither of us had business or technical experience, everything at the beginning, in hindsight, was an obstacle. From learning about entity structures, to reading legal documents, discovering how investment structures worked and what exactly was making our app function, everything was new and foreign. But with the right amount of research and learning from amazing professionals around us, we learned how to familiarize ourselves and understand these concepts quick and effectively. On a more personal note, one of the biggest challenges for Ben and I has been watching our peers take jobs right out of college, make decent salaries, and begin to settle into what essentially is the foundation of independence. And instead, by taking the entrepreneur route, we've taken the risk of putting that all on hold while we attempt to take a different route to independence. And don't get us wrong, we wouldn't change what we are doing for the world. But at times, it's a difficult thing to deal with.

Ben: Our strategy has been to perfect the version on iPhone before we make a build in a whole other language. We really want to make sure that we get the users experience as friendly and engaging as possible, and its easier to experiment, iterate, and analyze on one platform as opposed to two. With that being said, in reality, we imagine an Android version will be ready for market no later than early 2015.

Ken: It was definitely a hurdle that startups with a technical cofounder are lucky they don't have to deal with. I remember doing research in the University of Delaware library for hours with Ben learning about different coding languages and potential structures that the application could be built in. I would say about 50% of the things I read and learned went right over my head. But we kept reading and kept learning. We also set up meetings with computer software professors who were open to letting us pick their brains and ask all of our questions. After a while of research, we had a pretty good basis knowledge for what the build would entail, and from there we had the next challenge of choosing a developer. That was probably the scariest part - trusting that we were giving our idea, time, and money to the right team, especially with our limited knowledge. But we got lucky. Super lucky. We ended up teaming with development and design firm, SFCD, who not only did a fantastic job on the entire app itself, but who understood that, as non-technical cofounders, we needed things explained to us on layman's terms. And they did just that throughout our entire engagement. Now, Ben and I have a deep knowledge of how our application is built, structured, and how it functions. And although we will always have more to learn, we've come a long way.

Ken: Although we've only had the opportunity to use Anniversary with our larger network of friends and family for a little over 2 weeks now, we've made an amazing early discovery when it comes to this idea of a "perfect" Anniversary. The best Anniversaries haven't been these large, momentous events - to our pleasant surprise, the small, inside jokes and tiny fleeting moments that people have captured with Anniversary are the ones that have been producing the biggest smiles and most chat engagement post-delivery. When you boil it down, receiving that type of Anniversary is saying to the recipients, "I appreciate our time together". And realizing that our app is creating that positive connection between people has been the most exciting thing for us so far.