After Jay Coatta's 16-year-old daughter won a tennis match, he received a text message from her that was filled with smiley-face emojis and other expressive icons.
Coatta was thrilled for her but frustrated. None of the emojis — cartoonish images that come installed on many smartphones — conveyed his daughter's expressions like her own face could.
When he mentioned that to a friend, Jon Christensen, the two experimented to see if they could build a phone feature to allow customizable emojis. That's when Phoji — a blended word of "photo" and "emoji" — was born.
It took two years to develop the app platform. While the original idea hatched out of interpersonal communication, the company has two different types of uses: person-to-person and business-to-consumer. Phoji is getting revenue chiefly from businesses that are using it to reach consumers.
Meanwhile, Christensen secured more than $1 million from investors, including angel investor Scott Honour of Northern Pacific Group in Wayzata. "They've come up with something really unique, particularly with how companies communicate with their customers," Honour said.
Phoji is one of about 60 start-ups to be granted eligibility as a 2016 Minnesota's Angel Tax Credit company by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. This means an investor in Phoji can receive up to a 25 percent rebate on their investment. And the company will need several million dollars more to scale up nationally.
The free phone application officially launched last month and has been downloaded by 5,000 users so far. Phoji has a pending patent for the concept.
Already 50 local companies have signed up as "broadcasters" to pay for the business-to-consumer version while everyday users can access it for free. For businesses, it is the next generation of personalized push marketing as consumer preference shifts toward more direct advertising.