Garrett Gee, now 30 years old, sold his snap business to Snapchat for $54 million. When Gee was younger he had a smartphone and used a scan app which scanned UPC barcodes used to purchase retail products. Gee hated the app however, and decided to delete it. Gee searched for a better scan app that was more user friendly but couldn’t find one. Gee decided then at the Brigham Young University that he was going to make his own app that scanned Mobile QR and Barcode scanners called, “Scan.”
After a massive success with the app he decided to make a company with his classmate called Scan Inc. In two years they raised $8 million and upgraded the apps features and adapted it to customer requests. By 2012 Scan had been downloaded over 25 million times and generating $60,000 per month. In 2014 they decided to sell the Scan app for $54 million to Snapchat.
Gee has a very creative personality and loves to explore, these traits played a key role in him being able to solve a problem that a lot of people didn’t see. Almost everything on his list of things starts with the word, “creating,” I believe he succeeded the way he did because of this personality. Today Gee is traveling the world with his wife and three kids, while still not touching the $54 million in their bank account.
Garrett took his original idea and allowed it to be turned into something even bigger and better than what it already was by selling Scan over to Snapchat. Something I also saw with Gee is he found a problem that was not crazy visible in much of society’s eyes but he made it visible to people. I use the scanning of people’s snap codes to add friends all the time. Garrett made a simple process even more simple through his idea.
I never knew the story behind Snapchat’s scan feature, learning about where it came from was super interesting and learning how it came to be was even cooler! I love how Gee saw a need that was being somewhat fulfilled, but saw how he could improve upon it, and make people’s lives easier. I think that’s a true mark of an entrepreneur.
The idea created by Garret Gee is not necessarily unique in it of itself. However, the way he presented it and solved some of the issues that existed within other scanning methods resulted in product marketable to one of the major social media platforms of today. Without Gee’s skill set, little would have happened concerning this pain. However, he was able to not only identify a problem but also create a marketable solution.