Swedish startup Memoto did well on Kickstarter – well enough to earn the company 11 times its funding goal, or $550,000 to drive the creation of its lifelogging camera. The small camera is designed to be worn on your person, features no buttons and takes pictures constantly while worn, but as of today it’s called the “Narrative Clip,” not the Memoto, as its creators rebrand to Narrative with $3 million in new funding. Both the rebrand and the new money will help Narrative expand on a global scale, the company says.
Memoto was a problematic name for global ambitions because it conflicted with the name of something else in the same market, the company explained in a release, so to make sure it didn’t run into any problems with trademarks worldwide, the Stockholm-based startup made the tough decision to switch to Narrative for their branding, which is pretty fitting, especially since now there’s freedom to develop more products beyond just the eponymous camera.
The design of the newly remained Narrative Clip remains the same, however, so pre-order customers can expect the same device to ship to them. And Narrative now has even more money in the coffers in addition to its big Kickstarter raise, thanks to a $3 million round led by San Francisco’s True Ventures. True Ventures has previously invested in hardware startups including MakerBot and Fitbit, and Narrative’s aims are somewhat parallel to those of Fitbit, with more of an emphasis on quantifying non fitness data. The round also included LDV Capital and London’s Passion Capital, which has backed photo sharing apps including EyeEm and Loopcam in the past.
The Narrative Clip should ship by November to the first customers, according to Narrative, and the $279 debut product is still available for pre-order in grey, white and orange. The device takes a photo every 30 seconds, and passes along geolocation data as well as date and time information to an online service that keeps track of your logged photos and makes them available to review or share. Photos are 5 megapixels, and the device has a built-in rechargeable battery that lasts up to two days.
Narrative might face a small challenge in terms of building on its existing momentum with completely new branding, but the lifelogging camera is still in very early stages, and hasn’t even shipped hardware yet, so the name switch is unlikely to drastically affect its chances at success. Early sample photos suggest this kind of scattershot approach at social photography could have some very lovely results, too, so I’ll be more interested to see how the Narrative Clip gets used by its first batch of owners as they set out to leave no stone undocumented.