During his visit to the Pablo Picasso Museum in Barcelona, a UF student thought of an idea that could last for a lifetime.
Jared Kash, a 20-year-old junior studying film, advertising and anthropology, created a digital time capsule called Time Flash that is scheduled to launch Feb. 14 in the App Store. It will be available on Google Play in March.
The “time capsule” will allow users to take a picture or record a video and send it to their select group of contacts. The sender can set the date and time that friends can view it, Kash said.
“The app lets you capture and relive an epic night with your friends,” he said.
For example, students may want to send posts into the future from study abroad trips or Spring Break.
“You will be able to see that someone sent you a time capsule, and we added a countdown for when you can open it,” he said.
Kash was studying abroad with the College of Journalism and Communications during Summer 2012 in Barcelona when he thought of the idea.
“I was looking at a painting of a woman at the Pablo Picasso Museum, and I felt a connection with her emotion and beauty,” Kash said.
The image made him wonder how people could digitally capture moments for longer. Kash took the concept to his father, who is an entrepreneurship professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. They decided to work together to turn the idea into a reality.
Courtland McEachrane, a 21-year-old UF economics junior, has worked with Kash throughout the process, helping him promote the app on campus.
“It’s just so easy to want to see it flourish and grow,” McEachrane said.
The team has raised $1.5 million through investors, Kash said. So far, he has 20 representatives at 20 universities around the country who have been promoting the launch as well.
Kash said that because he worked so hard on the app with his father, he will probably send his first post to family members.
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 1/29/2014 under the headline "Student-created app gets $1.5 million in investments"]
