Member Article

Doncaster entrepreneur secures £135k Angel investment for online photo startup

Doncaster entrepreneur Kelly Marsden has obtained a total of £135k seed funding from Yorkshire Angel Investors to launch her online family tree and photo sharing firm Twile.

Kelly and her business partner attended a start up programme called the ‘Dotforge accelerator’, to enable them to create a viable business plan.

At the end of the 13 weeks, the pair pitched their concept at a number of events and closed a seed round of £75k from Yorkshire Angel Investors.

The investment was used to further develop our product and to increase growth through advertising and the firm is set to close another investment round for £60k at the end of this month.

The firm has impressive aspirations, aiming for several thousand users in their first year, and in 5 years they are aiming to go worldwide.

They are also planning to partner with an online digital printing company to enable photos from customers’ timelines to be printed direct onto photobooks, calendars and mugs.

Kelly said: “Twile is a living, breathing family tree where every person you add, is given a timeline that you can fill with photos and stories about their life.

“We both had thousands of photos stored away which were rarely revisited.

“The photos didn’t tell the whole story of the event, Who, why, when, where - we wanted a tool to capture the story of our lives to ensure our children and their children could see who we were and who they were growing up.

“None of the online photo sharing tools allowed us to do that so we decided to build one.

“Our product is unique. There is no other offering the ability to create a family tree where every person has a rich visual timeline of their life.

“We hope to have millions of families using it to record their lives, so that they can revisit and relive their memories for years to follow.

“We want everyone to know and remember who they were growing up. The family tree will be used collaboratively by many family members, helping them to educate one another about family that others perhaps were not aware of. We would like our tool to ’bring family closer together.

“As a mum of 3 young children, I’m snap happy and have thousands of photos - now Twile turns them into stories of which I add titles and descriptions to.

“My children will know everything about their life - I can’t wait to show them in 10,20 or 30 years time - and I can’t wait to share their lives with my grandchildren.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .