Read Time: 6 minutes
Tech Topics In This Article: Atlanta startups, MediaTech
As I sit down to write this piece, I have five tabs open of other articles I’ve saved to read for later. That is on top of the at least a half a dozen email Substacks in my inbox vying for my attention. And I know the minute I open LinkedIn I’ll have several notifications for newsletters and long-form posts that I would find interesting.
That is not counting the stories I’ve “saved” for later after discovering them X, Instagram, or other random parts of the internet.
But when will I actually read all of that content?
I know it’s not just a personal problem. The more access to content we have, the harder it is to find the actual time to read that content. But what if we could get all the stories we wanted to read delivered in a format that allowed us to put down our phones, close our laptops, and actually enjoy the process of reading?
Enter Periodical, a platform designed by two Atlanta-based entrepreneurs that helps readers reclaim their time and enjoy the written word distraction-free.
INSIDE PERIODICAL
Think of Periodical like a magazine where every article is not only relevant to you individually, but are things you want to spend your time reading. Each Periodical is completely unique — up to 80 pages of personalized and curated content based on the reader’s specific interests and subscription taste. Subscribers can integrate publications they already follow (as long as they have an RSS feed). They can discover new authors who cover topics they want to explore.
Periodical’s backend technology combines all of a reader’s sources into a single, well-formatted PDF booklet, complete with visuals and photographs.
There is an option to receive your Periodical in a purely digital format. But the printed version, according to founders Geoffrey Graham and Jon Harmer, is where the real magic happens—inviting readers to disconnect from screens and reconnect with the joy of focused, intentional reading. That includes allowing readers to underline parts of stories that are interesting to them, write in the margin, and dog-ear pages to come back to later…something that is difficult to do in a purely digital world.
“I think the beauty of it is in its anachronism,” added Harmer.
“There’s a lot of technology in our life that is helping us get access to so many more amazing things,” Graham added. But Periodical allows readers to enjoy the best of digital media in a format that is intentional, tangible, and refreshingly offline.
THE ORIGINS OF PERIODICAL
Graham and Harmer are childhood friends, meeting back in grade school in Atlanta before both going off and building their own careers in technology.
Graham started his career in construction and moved into real estate. While building in the residential construction industry, Graham founded GuildQuality as a platform that helps home builders collect customer feedback. Founded in 2002, GuildQuality was acquired by EverCommerce in August 2017.
The concept for Periodical started around four years ago when Graham and Harmer talked about how overwhelming the digital content landscape had become and how difficult it was to keep up with all the journalists, authors, and bloggers they liked to follow.
Now, building Periodical has become a family affair. The two have built their own print shop that allows them to do “scalable, bespoke” one-off printing options that makes Periodical possible. Currently, Graham and Harmer, along with their families, are creating and printing every Periodical during weekend printing sessions.
From their home print shop, the Periodical team recently started printing and shipping their first editions out to subscribers. Currently, Periodical is available for $3 a month, plus $6 per printed issue.
BUILDING WHAT’S NEXT
In development is a feature that will let users upload content from their subscriptions that are behind paywalls. Next, Periodical plans to build a verified author program that offers a revenue-sharing option for creators whose content is widely published in Periodical.
“We want great sources to participate in the success we have,” added Graham.
In its early days, Periodical has gained traction among readers with an interest in the tech space. As a result, many of the personalized Periodicals so far have featured content on product management, industry insights, and tech trends.
“We learn through people subscribing,” added Graham. “And a big thing is to have really diverse Periodicals printed, people adding new sources, and us running into crazy edge cases in printing and being able to engineer solutions for how to present that content in great ways. The more people that are getting in there and adding their preferred content, and us dealing in real time through the printing process, the faster we make [Periodical] better.”
