Future Looks Picture Perfect for Mosaic

Like many great businesses, the idea for Mosaic sprang from two friends talking at a bar.

On a November evening in Nashua in 2010, Gerard Murphy and Andy Young, friends since seventh grade, were playing darts and talking about their shared passion for photography, when Andy asked how I was managing [digital] photos and I said not well, Murphy says.

Andy said, This smells like a business opportunity', Murphy recalls. The idea percolated until Young, who has 15 years experience in software development, and Murphy, who has 15 years experience in sales and marketing at start-up companies, formed Mosaic Storage Systems in March 2011. After investing $10,000 in a server, the business became very real, says Murphy, CEO.

Murphy and Young aim to make digital asset management easier for photographers, and allow them to access their catalogue of images anywhere. Mosaic released a free app called Mosaic View to support Adobe's Lightroom photo software. It sends a user's Lightroom photos to the cloud so images are viewable anywhere. The company also developed Mosaic Archive, which provides offsite, online, redundant, storage custom tailored for photographers.

The Mosaic View app allows users to store 2,000 images for free. To keep more photos, users can switch to a paid plan though Mosaic Archive, which allows users to store up to 20,000 images for $7 a month, 110,000 images for $15 a month, or unlimited images for $24 a month.

The company now has eight investors, has raised just under $250,000, and won $30,000, in-kind services, and office space at the abi Innovation Hub in Manchester at the VentureX pitch competition in February. (See story in the Small Business Finance Guide on page 23.)

Since launching the free app in August, Mosaic has stored more than one million photos in its database. Mosaic has converted about 4 percent of users to the paid model, Murphy says, adding the company is teetering on the edge of profitability and expects to have 2,000 customers by early 2013. It has two employees besides the founders.  To learn more, visit mosaicarchive.com.