Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Four years ago, FiftyThree—the team of ex-Microsoft creatives who launched a wildly popular iPad sketching app called Paper—was flush with venture capital and full of expansion ideas that they put into action. They started producing hardware: an iPad stylus called (unluckily) Pencil. They expanded the app to work on iPhones as a Post-it-esque idea jotter. They experimented with in-app purchases and a patronage model. They even soft-launched a whole new app called Paste, which lets Slack users pass visual materials back and forth with ease.

 

But all this activity had a somewhat flailing feel: What was Fiftythree’s core business? Was it about productivity software, or creative apps? Now, with a relaunch of both Paper and Paste, the company seems to have its story straight again. And that story is . . . they’re about productivity and creativity. And making great slide decks....