Company: EasyHi
Website: www.slide.ly
Founder: Tom More
Headquarters: Tel Aviv
Year Founded: 2010
Investors: Benson Oak Capital
Employees: 12
Twitter: @slidely
Facebook: facebook.com/slide.ly
Brief Company Description: EasyHi, the creator of Slidely, is a company dedicated to creating stories from meaningful moments and broadcasting them in a simple, creative way to save forever.
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By Tom More, founder and CEO
Product Overview
Slidely launched in June, 2012, as a web application that allows you to instantly create beautiful video slideshows from the photos and music you love. With Slidely, millions of people around the world express themselves creatively and emotionally through photos, videos, and music from their personal and social profiles as well as public sources.
In less than a year, over two billion photos were shared using Slidely’s web service, with more than 15 million Slidelys viewed since the website launched. On average, users create at least two Slidely videos during their first 15 minutes on www.slide.ly, using personal and public photos from Instagram, Facebook, Google, Picasa ,and Flickr, and great music from YouTube, SoundCloud, and more, and instantly share with their friends on social networks.
Our users create Slidelys about everything from personal stories combining friend and family photos, to trending events and sport and celebrity tributes—while brands, businesses, and non-profits use Slidely to showcase products, celebrate milestones, and engage clients.
We recently closed the last part of our round, totaling $1.5 million, and are gearing toward a larger round to help leverage Slidely’s growing traction and user base, towards our ultimate goal: Slidely’s Creative Suite of self-expression tools that allow everyone to easily create, share, and discover personal, social, and trending visual experiences.
Founder’s Story
My name is Tom More, the CEO and founder of EasyHi. I’m a passionate, self-taught musician, photographer, autodidact creative, and tenacious entrepreneur.
Growing up, my family moved a lot—from Tel Aviv; to London; Rome; Paris; Orange County, California; (and a dozen more shorter stops). The fleeting nature of moments was a constant theme, and led to a growing interest in creatively keeping and sharing experiences and discovering new ways for self-expression.
I started as a self-taught multi-instrumentalist musician, arranger, producer and performer—and have been playing for more than 20 years. Music is my greatest passion, followed by photography and the visual arts.
Caught by an early glimpse of technology’s potential role, I learned to build computers, code, design UI/UX, and eventually consult hi-tech and startup companies.
I combined my experience in technology, design, and marketing, with my love to build new things and my creative drive, to develop EasyHi—envisioning a go-to platform that enables users worldwide to express themselves by easily creating unique, beautiful content from their favorite things.
I believe that this combination, with a focus on products that evoke emotion, is what led to the rapid success of Slidely. Users are looking to express themselves creatively, and Slidely offers a free, easy-to-use solution.
Marketing/Promotion Strategy
Featured in Mashable, Techcrunch, Yahoo, The Next Web, Social Times, and more, Slidely quickly found a warm place in creative fans’ hearts. We have recently started using public relations efforts to help promote and generate news for Slidely.
Slidely was built with deep social and viral features integrated in the service. Users share their slideshows on social media or at events and when others see them, they are more inclined to use Slidely for their next event, or as an outlet of creative self-expression. The Slidely videos speak for themselves. When people see that professional-looking slideshows can be made in under a minute, at no cost, it’s likely that they will visit the site and create a Slidely video of their own.
Market Opportunity
We’re in a fast growing, multi-billion dollar international market comprised of social photo sharing, self-expression, and fun applications that enable users to create videos and slideshows. The digital storytelling arena is soaring, and filled with opportunities in an already growing market. Mobile analytics firm Flurry has found that photo and video apps grew by 89 percent from October 2011 to March 2012, and social networking apps grew 54 percent over the same period.
How We Differentiate From the Competition
Slidely’s products are multi-dynamic, and combine content that users care about in ways that combine creativity and emotions.
All Slidely projects are stored on the site using the Cloud, and can be revisited and edited at any time.
EasyHi plans to offer multiple apps that are accessible to create and broadcast from all devices with one, easily accessible platform. By providing a unified and seamless platform, we eliminate the need to connect to a multitude of social accounts, media sources, and applications, allowing users to easily create, share, and discover personal, social, and trending visual experiences, wherever they are.
Business Model
EasyHi’s plan to initiate monetization efforts centers around a freemium offering that will provide premium features, content and themes via subscriptions, in-app purchases, pay-on-demand, real-world photo accessories and will offer both Light and Pro versions of the platform.
Current Needs
Slidely consists of a team of passionate professionals who love delivering products that evoke emotion. We’re looking for more developers to join our team, and help us meet the needs and demands of our rapidly growing user base. We are also looking for a super-talented, creative, knowledgeable VP Marketing.
In the next few months, EasyHi will continue to connect with potential partners for our next funding round to help us begin developing major updates, new features, and possibly new products in the future.
EasyHi – www.slide.ly
