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Piggy has raised $7.7 million for its mobile content creation app that enables users to easily create documents, presentations, invitations, and more, directly from their mobile phones.
The Piggy platform launches today on ProductHunt. It is available for download worldwide on
the Apple App Store and Google Play Store as a free, unmonetized service.
Software investor Insight Partners led the round, and other investors include Remagine Ventures, Stardom Ventures, and others.
The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company said it empowers users to create and share visual and interactive mobile documents that communicate their unique ideas, stories and thoughts while leveraging social media standards.
“With Piggy, you can create documents in the same way that you create social media posts. It’s
mobile, interactive, supports all types of media, and makes it easy and fun to achieve stunning
results,” said CEO Shaul Olmert, in a statement. “The company overview deck created using Piggy demonstrated the platform’s capabilities to investors, and convinced them of the product’s potential.”
The Tel Aviv-based startup, was founded in late 2020 by Shaul Olmert and Ilan Leibovitch, both
second-time entrepreneurs, having founded Playbuzz (now known as Ex.co) and Rounds
(acquired by Kik Interactive), respectively. Piggy employs 15 people.
“Piggy enables the authoring of pure mobile content, harnessing the creativity and engagement
of Gen-Z users to express themselves in the most native and natural way,” said Jeff Horing, managing partner at Insight Partners, in a statement. “As mobile devices take over many functions previously enabled by computers, Piggy is reinventing document creation for this era.”
Chief product officer Ilan Leibovich added in a statement, “People create content in many
forms for both personal and professional purposes. Our goal is to enable them to create it on
their phone and share it instantly with anyone. When a user shares their creations, the recipients don’t need to download an app, register, or have a social media account to enjoy it.”
The app includes features such as polls, audio, image editing and native camera integration as well as many templates that help people author beautiful content without design skills.
I asked Olmert what the inspiration was. He pointed to this video by a young girl on TikTok.
Olmert said in an email this TikTok video was made by an American teenager. She was asked to write an essay for school about “how the quarantine impacted you.” Rather than write, she used TikTok and generated tens of millions of likes.
“What I saw in it was a testament that Gen-Z can really unleash their brilliance and creativity when given the option to express themselves using the tools that are natural for them,” he said. “And I figured: let’s create an app that lets them do that for all purposes, not just social media.”
Asked about the competition, Olmert said, “We want to be a modern-day alternative to word processors and presentation authoring apps such as Powerpoint.” The target is Gen-Z and young millennials who are “mobile natives.”
Olmert said the company operates in the brave new category of “mobile content,” or content that was created on a mobile device, meant to be consumed on a mobile device and utilizes the features, culture and usage habits of mobile platforms.
He noted many platforms for content authoring, some of them with a reasonably good mobile user interface. Nonetheless, they mostly mimic desktop and print formats.
“Our goal is to enrich the language of documents, presentations and formal communications with the enthusiasm and immersion of mobile culture,” he said. “Think about it. You can create your resume on LinkedIn, for instance, but it looks 100% like the traditional resume format- standard, boring, technical, shying away from any personal expression and reflection of who the job applicant is.”
He added, “The goal of this content is to reflect who you are and what your capabilities are, so its viewers can truly assess your potential fit to their culture and organizational structure. With Piggy, a young job applicant that grew up with a mobile phone, and used to express themselves using social media, is able to utilize features such as selfie video, interactive elements and animations, to name a few, to create a mobile resume that is much more expressive, genuine and truly reflective of who they are.”
Piggy isn’t expecting people to create novels or doctorate dissertations on their mobile phones. That is not Piggy’s goal.
“But when you are working on a school paper, letter, presentation, notes, journal entry, photo album or many other types of content that people have the need to create frequently, Piggy provides an accessible, seamless solution,” he said. “From a one caption meme to a full book report, there’s no limit to the length and substance of Piggy creations.”
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