Flippy takes singing into your hairbrush to a whole new level. Through its “flips” — short, user-friendly videos that catch you reenacting your favorite movie scenes or music videos — you can be a social star. Pick a famous clip, superimpose your face on the main character, and lip sync your way to stardom after you share with friends.
Not surprising, Flippy has already taken various top spots in the iTunes store across several countries. Its young demographic of 13-25 year-olds love the interactivity. Through the app, you can discover other users’ videos and even search clips depending on your mood.
This is the fourth product of CEO Misha Leybovich and CTO Clay Garrett, who aim to give the power of content creation back to users. For them, it is important that users can connect to the content on a deeper level, says Leybovich. Through Flippy, they become part of the story.
After raising $1M over the past four years, Flippy is now in the midst of another funding round. For Hypepotamus. Leybovich talks about what inspired Flippy, their revenue model, and how he manages his team remotely from the West Coast.
How were you founded?
Our company was founded in 2012, and we’ve built 4 products over 4 years. They’ve all been consumer-content creation products that use popular media in some sort of remix/personalization way. Flippy was just released a few months ago.
Funding or bootstrapped?
We raised $1M in the first 4 years of the company, and are in the midst of a funding round now.
What’s your pitch?
Become the star of famous clips! Join millions of people in the best way to make your friends die laughing! Flippy records video of you lip syncing a clip then we automagically put your head on the body of the main character, and you share and everyone’s all like, “you’re my hero.” We have the #1 library of clips to parody, with favorites you won’t find anywhere else, and you can add your own. It’s quick, easy, and the results are hilarious.
What problem are you solving?
We let people personalize their favorite videos. Flippy always makes people laugh and feel good, and we probably need more of that in the world. Remixing has existed as long as media has existed, but to be able to participate in creation, you’ve needed professional-level tools and skills. Flippy makes you able to create fun and personalized remixes easily by providing a dope library, fun tools, and social network to engage around your and other people’s creations. Our demographic is quite young, ages 13-25.
Please describe the market/industry impact:
Flippy also solves a big problem for content owners. In an age of ad blindness and ad blockers, Flippy lets content owners actually engage their fans in doing something that they will share with their friends. The very best way to get your content promoted, and have a longer shelf life, is to let fans become the stars themselves, so that they have a deeper connection to your content and very organically share with their friends.
As CEO, how do you stay on top of your team while you’re on the West Coast? Do you have any advice for other startup leaders on managing your team from afar?
Through the 4 years of our company, we’ve always had a remote team. I was comfortable with this arrangement from my experience at my last job because we were very often remote. We started that way simply because I lived in San Francisco and Clay lived in Atlanta. As the team expanded from Clay and I, we decided to build the tech team around him in ATL. I’m in ATL quite often to hang out with the team. It’s actually been pretty easy: we have a Hangout every day to talk through the day’s issues, chat on Slack throughout the day all the time, have ad-hoc additional Hangouts as needed, and organize all our work in Asana. Who knows what the future holds, maybe we’ll all end up in one location, but for now it actually works very well.
And your revenue model?
We have the same ultimate business model as all social media — build a large audience, then brands pay to sponsor content in the app’s native format. We first need to get to larger scale, but once there, making money in this way is pretty well established. We have already demonstrated in the app many times that featured clips get loads of engagement, and this is of great value to content owners.
How’d you get the idea for it?
We’ve been making consumer-creation products that use third-party content for 4 years: 4 products during that time. Everything we’ve made has gotten quicker, easier, and more fun. The concept of Flippy kind of naturally evolved out of a bunch of conversations. We did have an “a ha!” moment around a late night campfire last year when it all came together, but it was really the cumulative result of a lot of time, work, brainstorming, and experience.
Who are your competitors and how do you stand out?
We compete for time on phone with everything else out there. More specifically, with other content creation and engagement products. We believe that people use different expression apps for different reasons at different times — all we can do is be the best at doing what we do.
How does ATL weave into your story?
Clay and I met in ATL while doing a Team in Training marathon together. Our whole dev and product team lives in ATL and we have an office at ATV. It’s a great place to have a startup!
