Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Kehoe.
Hi Tom, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have been in the print yearbook industry for over 40 years. My clients began asking me for a digital solution for their yearbooks. I researched ‘digital yearbooks’ and found that there was nothing available other than PDF versions of a print yearbook. This is a very bad solution.
So… I decided I need to create a relevant digital yearbook! That was seven years ago… it has been a complicated journey. I wasted almost two years with a white shoe Wall Street attorney who sucked $50K out of my savings that should have gone into creating a MVP, to potential investors who just wanted to have their ego stroked.
There has been a GREAT DEAL of failure. There has been a GREAT DEAL of learning and a GREAT DEAL of pivoting as well as learning that I was (am) not as smart as I thought I was. What kept me going was the incredible amount of validation I was (and am) getting from the market.
I surrounded myself with people smarter than I and people who should be paid a GREAT DEAL of money, but aren’t, and, instead, are working for equity. More validation.
Idiom Publishing (the corporate name, the product name is YearBoxx) is not necessarily in the yearbook business but in the much larger Memory Preservation Industry. This collaboration of products consists of yearbooks, theatre programs, sports teams, churches, weddings… Idiom is going to disrupt this multi-billion dollar industry by porting growingly irrelevant print products to highly relevant, far more robust and dramatically less expensive digital products, delivered on the device of choice of everyone, the cellphone.
We just launched the first true cloud-based, digital, interactive yearbook to the market in January. I have earmarked my last $100K to a marketing campaign after spending my almost last $150K on designing and building software. We are in the process of interviewing investors to get money to build out the vertical products. To date, I have been self funding the business. I am either going to be stupid rich (although, that is NOT my motivation) or I will be living in a refrigerator box under a highway overpass (also not my motivation).
Being an entrepreneur is NOT for the faint of heart!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As previously referenced, it has NOT been a smooth road.
Struggles:
– Designing the build software (software needed for the school to build their yearbook).
– Putting together relevant business documents. My first business plan was 62 pages!
– Being manipulated by a dishonest lawyer. VERY costly in money and time.
– Learning that people often do NOT do what they say the will do. Trying to separate big takers from big doers.
– Finding investors.
– Coming to terms that investors are not interested in a pre-revenue startup and realizing I was going have to take
ALL the money I had and put it into this venture.
– Finding the right people to bring into this venture.
– Preserving…
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As referenced previously, Idiom is in the memory preservation industry. We are disrupting the industry by creating digital products that will replace print ones.
Our launch product is the school yearbook. The first yearbook was introduced in 1860 by Yale University. It was a printed book filled with pictures (actually, the yearbooks created in the late 1860’s were mostly drawings and text, half tones required a lot of ink) and text. The students received their yearbooks, excitedly opened them, and flipped through the pages looking at the pictures and reading the text. In 2025, received (or will be receiving in a few weeks) their yearbooks and will be doing the EXACT same thing. There has been very little product innovation in over one hundred years. Gen Z, our current demography, doesn’t want to flip through pages, they want to swipe through pages. They spend an average of almost eight hours a day on their cellphones and they want every thing that can be on their cellphones to BE on their cellphones, including their yearbook.
As the Founder/CEO, and more specifically, the Founder/CEO of a startup, I have been busy doing everything. From designing (not coding) the build software, to creating the actual yearbook app, to the UI, to marketing directions, to pitch decks, I have done it all. The team I have created has been extra ordinally helpful in making my work better and smarter.
I am particularly proud of the product we have created. It addresses a plethora of industry problems, gives our end-user a truly relevant product for dramatically less money ($75 for a typical yearbook, now $7).
What I hope your readers will take away from my short description of YearBoxx is that we have introduced to the market a revolutionary product that will preserve their entire graduation year (from the first day of school to graduation, something a print yearbook cannot do because of deadlines), that will keep the class connected through in app protocols, can be updated constantly, is always accessible (print yearbooks end up in boxes), has embedded video, has NO limits to the amount of memories (pictures, video, text) preserved (print yearbooks are restricted the number of pages a school can afford).
A digital yearbook should have been introduced years ago, but hasn’t because the major industry players (print yearbook companies) fear a digital product will cannibalize their high margin print yearbook… and they are right!
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
As we are currently introducing a next generation product, we ARE the big shift, change and trend… at the moment. We will constantly be iterating existing products and innovating new products in multiple sectors.
Pricing:
- YearBoxx costs $6.99. THAT IS IT, no extra charges.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yearboxx.com
