All of the other apps out there were really more
of a tool,
black and white. You could kind of feel that they
were built by a bunch of tech dudes that were
really passionate about this photography space
from a creator's perspective to a creator's perspective.
We wanted to be bold,
feminine, fun. We wanted to feel as fun as the
act of creating.
We never in a million years thought that we'd get
it to this point because we really just launched it
as a passion project and something that we really thought
would be fun.
I'm Tessa Barton. And I'm Cole Herman.
And together we started a photo and video editing app
that brought in over
26,000,000 in 2023.
We grew up in Utah
and we met as babies.
Our parents were best friends in college.
We already kind of knew Utah was not the place
we were going to end up.
We really love New York City,
and in 2016 we made the jump.
We moved there. Our main revenue stream when we first
moved to New York was pretty much just my salary.
I was actually working at a startup based in Utah
at the time and convinced them to let me work
remote.
We could barely afford our rent,
so we were trying a million different things,
everything from starting a denim jacket brand to writing a
book to selling online courses and guides to improve your
photography.
We started shooting together and really started kind of pushing
how to post on Instagram.
Not just like here's my outfit,
but how can you tell a story and take it
further?
And that's when we kind of started seeing people really
be interested and inspired and wanting to be a part
of it.
That's kind of when we really started taking it seriously.
There were times when we looked at our bank account,
it had negative dollars. So when all of a sudden,
you know, someone's paying you for something,
you're creating, it's really amazing.
And also challenging.
We used to make kind of our own collage wall
out of our magazines that we'd find in New York,
but it's actually shockingly expensive to get enough magazines to
cover a whole wall.
I mean, it was like 300 bucks to do something
like that.
And everyone was asking, how did you do this?
How did you get, you know,
this many images to make this thing happen?
And we thought, you know,
we can do this and then we can make it
available for much cheaper.
The Klashkit was a good learning lesson for us because
it was our first physical product though there was so
much interest and people were so excited about it,
it didn't hit right away.
And we were doing this out of our tiny
250 square foot apartment. We had boxes to the ceiling
and like orders weren't rolling in at the start.
But we learned so much about how much you have
to market and showcase it and in,
you know, different areas. It's not just like
here's a product that created that come by it.
After that we launched Lightroom presets.
So that was kind of our Hooray into
photo editing. I was kind of one of the first
in the space to give away my secret sauce.
Especially professional photographers were kind of,
you know, keeping it a secret and cultivating that.
And I just had learned so much from other artists
that were willing to share with me.
And so that kind of became my goal.
Like I'm going to let everyone in and they can
learn and make it their own.
I would say the three big ingredients are obviously the
technical components,
the programming and then how it looks and then how
it works.
We were lucky because we were able to combine each
other's talents to do all three.
My day-to-day was on the programming and kind of the
user experience and design of it.
I spend most of the time creating,
you know, the presets, testing on every kind of image,
making sure we have something that caters to everyone's needs.
It started out just the two of us.
You know, we had no team or investors or anything
really,
really. We started this without the intention of it becoming
a business.
It was really started as a a passion project,
a side project, a way for us to hopefully get
some
extra income to pay rent and survive in New York
City.
So we're creating a new support page in the Tesla
app right now.
We
were building it probably from the hours of like 10:00
PM to 3:00 AM That was kind of our our
time that we had.
It was a lot of tears and trial and error
and thinking,
OK, this is a dumb idea,
it's never going to work because we couldn't really get
it for a long time.
It was a struggle. But I remember once we finally
got something working and looking the way we were hoping,
the excitement and the joy was like,
OK, we're going to do this.
So we launched the app in June of 2018.
It was so amazing that we were able to launch
with a community of people that were already interested and
begging for the product.
It was red. We had chunky fonts.
You know, we spoke to our users in a fun
way,
like woohoo, you saved your photo like sweet.
Like we just use, you know,
kind of slang and lingo and made it feel much
more relatable.
And I think that really separated us from all of
our competitors.
The growth was just pretty much fluid and steady.
We had this amazing organic support from this really vibrant,
creative, cool community that you know,
was willing to share it and share that they loved
using the app.
That's what really started the growth for us.
And I would say 2020 was a pivotal year where
we realized,
OK, this is a company now,
this is no longer just a side project.
We did do everything ourselves and letting other people in
on it and also just trusting that that's going to
you take it to the next level has been challenging
for us as founders. But once we kind of started
leaning into that,
we've just seen so much more success.
Tesla Pro is 599 a month
and Tesla Lux is 999 a month.
So the different tiers are you can use it for
free,
you can edit your photos with some of our best
presets.
And then there's Teza Pro,
which you can use all of our film effects.
We can edit single videos,
and you can use all of our templates.
We have over 150 kind of editorial,
really cool kind of magazine inspired templates and then on
top of that there's Tesla Lux which let's use Studio
which is our like big full-featured video editor.
We learned so much from launching physical products and then
having a digital product.
Just being able to have something where you can just
actually reach so many people,
so many people can be a part of what you're
building versus having this physical product.
And you can only ship to people in the US.
Someone can post something about it and it can go
viral or reach a ton of people in,
you know, different countries all over the world.
It's just pretty amazing that this digital product can be
downloaded at anytime,
anywhere, and it doesn't change the cost.
We currently live in Los Angeles,
CA. We've been here for about 3 years.
I still think we live in New York mentally,
but we're California people now.
We have a daughter, she's two years old and she's
crazy and fun.
Working with your partner can be challenging.
I mean, it's important to kind of set your roles,
especially once you start, you know,
running a company or working with other people.
And we don't really step on each other's toes,
but we come together creatively with the vision.
I think it's really important for me to also just
keep a pulse on,
you know, what people are interested in,
what people are liking, how they're creating in general.
One thing Cole always says is done is better than
perfect.
And that has been something we have used in our
business all the time,
because if we perfected something,
we'd probably never get it fully out.
But you know, you learn so much by just putting
something out and people will tell you how,
how they want it to be better.
It's hard to ever feel like you've made it because
you keep getting inspired and you keep seeing like new
avenues and ways to kind of
reach people. We have imposter syndrome,
I think. Still sometimes we're like,
are we sure? Like why are why do people like
this?
But it's cool. I think you can just see the
passion and the community is really such a big part
of it.
They inspire a lot of what we create
feels amazing. Looking back on just how crazy it was
to start it all and it feels a little surreal.
We honestly feel just incredibly
lucky and grateful that we get to work on what
we love to do every day.
It's
OK.