Full Name Zachary Allia Nationality American Alma mater Northeastern University | Residence Eden, UT Occupation Entrepreneur Name Zach Allia | |
Born Gloucester, Massachusetts | ||
Zach Allia is an American photographer, entrepreneur and web developer. In 2007 Allia founded "Free Gifts" for Facebook, which became the most popular app on Facebook, with over 10 million active users. He later co-founded Soma, a water filtration system which has raised over $3.7 million in funding.
Career
Allia founded Free Gifts in 2007 in response to other Facebook applications charging $1 or more for "gifts". The app grew in popularity, eventually becoming the most popular app on Facebook's platform, with over 10 million active users. Allia sold Free Gifts to Social Gaming Network (SGN) in 2008. In 2010, Allia bought back Free Gifts for "less than 10%" of original purchase price by SGN. Dave McClure and Narendra Rocherolle assisted Allia in the repurchase of Free Gifts.
In January 2012, Allia founded "Friendsheet", an application that turns Facebook photos into a Pinterest-like grid. The application was endorsed by Mark Zuckerberg and had over 150,000 unique visitors per month as of March 2012.
Later in 2012, Allia co-founded Soma, eco-friendly water filtration systems. Allia was responsible for creating the company's Kickstarter dashboard, named "Kickstarter Status Board", later available for free as a Google Chrome extension. Soma's Kickstarter campaign raised over $100,000 in the first nine days, ending the campaign at $147,000. In July 2013, Soma announced a $3.7 million round of funding with investors including Baseline Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Cowboy Ventures, Vast Ventures, Mindful Investors, and Tim Ferriss.