At Gemnote, we help businesses connect with people through gift-giving, making it easy for companies to send gifts to customers and employees.

We recognized that many online stores lacked good customer service, and we aimed to bring that back to our customers.

The business started as a simple solution to my own problem, using email and PayPal, and it organically grew into a functioning business.

We realized that we had to be at the customer's doorstep to improve retention, so we started doing initial deliveries ourselves to understand the customer experience better.

We initially tried offering photography services for customers, but nobody wanted to pay for it, which was a failure for us.

In the beginning, our software was basic, so we compensated for its limitations by providing customers with valuable advice on optimizing their websites.

In the early days, we generated Groupon vouchers using a FileMaker app, which was a makeshift solution that involved exporting data and emailing vouchers manually.

When we first launched our product, I was embarrassed about its readiness, but we had to ship it. We learned from our initial customers, who provided valuable feedback that helped us improve.

Our first idea was to create an app that digitized catalogs, which we called Tote, but it faced challenges in development and approval.