And again, Cobo couldn't get anyone to use Unfold. I knew people wanted time to craft Instagram stories and keep them."Ĭobo borrowed another $500 from family and hired the same developer. "When I built Unfold, you could create these beautiful, artful stories that looked like a print magazine and save them forever. Plus, "I felt that people wanted to share stories a longer time than 24 hours," Cobo says (originally Stories disappeared after a day, but Instagram enabled archiving after 24 hours starting in December 2017). That was June 2017, and according to Cobo, no such app existed and people were designing Stories in Photoshop or using basic collage apps, so he knew there was a market for a better way. It sparked my idea to change the format of Portafolio and pivot to Unfold, where users could have templates to showcase their Stories." "At the time, Instagram Stories was catching popularity. Most people I knew didn't even have an iPad, and the ones that liked it wanted to share their work on an iPhone instead," says Cobo. "Designers now had a portfolio app for iPad that came with templates - but no one was using it. It was a basic version of a portfolio layout app, the first one to exist for iPad, launched March 2017 from his Brooklyn apartment.Ĭobo thought it could be successful as a product, but no one else seemed to. Then called Portafolio, it was inspired by print publications and designed for people who love minimalist aesthetics. Because my background is in design, I thought I would just create an app with my design skills and put it out there for other people to use it, but I didn't have the skills to do the coding."Ĭobo, whose only income was some food money from his dad, borrowed a total of $500 from him to hire a developer on freelance marketplace Upwork to code his app. "There wasn't anything that could showcase my work in the way I wanted. Getting ready for a career fair, he realized there was no software or app that could create a portfolio of his work on an iPad. In January 2017, Cobo, who is from Gran Canaria, Spain, was on scholarship attending Parson's School of Design in Manhattan, studying strategic design and management. "Unfold is actually a pivot from another app," co-founder Alfonso Cobo tells CNBC Make It. It's a tale of virtual overnight success, because Unfold began in earnest in May when Cobo sent McCune, then strangers, a private message on Instagram. Instagram now features Unfold as a recommended app to help brands "easily create next-level Stories ads," according to McCune. The company wanted to work together to help brands create better content for Instagram Stories. "Our growth tripled because people would ask these influencers in the Q&A what they are using for their Instagram Stories that were curated, and they would say Unfold." That month the app hit 3.5 million active users, its biggest spike yet.Īnd something else great happened. "That's when Unfold really got traction," McCune tells CNBC Make It. Since July 10, when Instagram released Q&As, where users can post a question and have followers answer, the app has averaged 75,000 downloads per day. The two co-founders, Alfonso Cobo (25) and McCune (23), who met less than a year ago, say the business has already made over $1 million in revenue and received a recent offer that values the company at $10 million, according to McCune.
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