Strong sales have led digital camera startup Flashback to reassess the $500,000 investment deal it brokered on Shark Tank Australia, with its co-founders considering if that provisional funding offer is still worth a 10% stake in the growing business.
Flashback produces affordable digital cameras that replicate the form and feel of disposable film cameras.
Photos taken on Flashback emulate traditional film stocks, and take 24 hours to ‘develop’ before appearing on a user’s smartphone, further copying the charm of analogue photography.
Founded in 2021 by University of Queensland students Kelric Mullen and Mackenzie Salisbury, the startup has secured $800,000 in Kickstarter backing and has launched its own webstore.
Mullen and Salisbury presented their successful idea on this year’s season of Shark Tank Australia, ultimately securing a $500,000 handshake deal with Maxine Horne that valued Flashback at $5 million.
With the deal still in the due diligence phase in early December, Flashback co-founder Kelric Mullen said the business’ growing success was cause for consideration.
“Maxine brings a lot to the table, she’s an incredible investor, and she’s an even more amazing founder,” Mullen told SmartCompany last week.
“But we also have to re-evaluate with the time that’s passed, whether that deal is something that we want to go ahead with, whether we need to give away 10% for that type of funding.”
Flashback has passed $4 million in revenue since launching and Mullen estimates 15,000 of its cameras are now in the hands of amateur photographers.
It recently recorded its biggest single-day sales total, equating to $105,000 in revenue, through the Black Friday sales period.
Only 35% of its sales now originate from Australia, Mullen added, calling the US, southeast Asia, and western Europe some of its major markets.
The pair intend to map out the next 12 months to decide on the deal Horne presented on the Shark Tank Australia set, said Mullen.
Flashback is not the only startup to seriously consider the deal laid before them on the Shark Tank Australia stage.
After telling SmartCompany her handshake deal was evolving behind the scenes, Clutch Glue founder Annabel Hay this week confirmed to the Australian Financial Review she ultimately turned down her $400,000 Shark Tank Australia offer.
In its place is a $1.4 million investment deal, led by Blackbird Ventures and Koala’s Dany Milham.
Beyond the investment deal, other changes are taking place at Flashback.
The startup says processing photos taken on Flashback cameras is more technically involved than simply applying an image filter.
As such, the business uses external servers to handle its film simulation, instead of using the smartphone app to handle the process itself.
Mullen said privacy and data security is a key concern for Flashback, as “photos can be very intimate to someone’s life”.
However, he revealed on-phone photo development is “about 90% complete”.
“We’ve listened to our audience, we’ve listened to our customers,” Mullen said.
Flashback’s growing popularity also means growing server costs, making on-phone development a priority for the startup.
“I think everyone loves the idea of on-phone development, it’s just taken some time to basically take our simulations and make them efficient enough to run on a phone.”
While the startup has enjoyed early success via Kickstarter and its D2C webstore, it will also consider other ways to reach customers in 2025.
Mullen said Flashback’s focus on improving the product for its early adopters has been its priority since launch.
“We just feel that we owe it to our current customers to keep pushing our software, keep improving the camera, and we should do that well and truly before we start to look at retail and put resources towards getting into retail,” he said.
“So it’s just something we haven’t really pushed for straight away, [but] is something that next year we will probably take a serious look at.”
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Senior Business Journalist
Focused on the small business sector, David’s work covers the political, regulatory, and economic issues facing Australian entrepreneurs. Prior to joining SmartCompany, he was a reporter for Business Insider Australia. You can follow him on LinkedIn.
