Bump Technologies

About Bump Technologies

Bump Technologies, Inc. was a software company established in 2008 by David Lieb, Jake Mintz, and Andy Huibers. The idea for its flagship product, Bump, reportedly came to Lieb during an MBA class at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as a solution to the cumbersome process of exchanging contact information. Lieb and Mintz, who met at the university, dropped out of their MBA program to launch the company with Huibers.

The company's primary offering was a mobile application for iOS and Android that allowed users to digitally share contact information, photos, and files by physically bumping their devices together. This functionality was not based on Near Field Communication (NFC), but rather on a proprietary algorithm that analyzed sensor data like accelerometer readings and the phone's location to identify the two devices involved in the interaction on Bump's servers. Initially focused on contact sharing, the app's most popular use case quickly became photo sharing, with users sharing approximately 2 million photos daily at one point. The business model included providing its technology to other apps; for instance, PayPal integrated Bump's capabilities to facilitate money transfers between users.

After participating in the Y Combinator accelerator program in the summer of 2009, Bump Technologies secured significant venture capital. The company raised a total of approximately $20 million in funding from prominent investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and SV Angel. By early 2013, the Bump app had amassed over 125 million downloads and was ranked among the top free iPhone apps of all time. In September 2013, Google acquired Bump Technologies for a sum reported to be between $30 million and $60 million. Following the acquisition, the Bump app and a related photo-sharing app called Flock were discontinued on January 31, 2014, as the team was refocused on new projects within Google. The team and the technology from an unreleased photo-sharing app they were developing went on to form the foundation for Google Photos.