About

The Idea

YOUBIQ is the classic start-up story of “scratching an itch”. The idea came from a wood mount that Founder & CEO Gordon Fowler crafted that allowed his iPhone to rotate around the aperture of its camera so it could capture sharp panoramas and HDR images with a tripod. To do this, he created a “gimbal,” turning his iPhone upside down to make it compact and stable. Gordon then contacted Hub Yonkers, an old friend and industrial designer, about turning it into a product calling it the “Gymbl™”, while he figured out whether it was worth starting a new company to realize it.

During this process, Gordon found that the photography and video accessory market for digital cameras was not embracing smartphones very seriously in spite of their rapidly improving cameras. He also realized that the Gymbl™ mount could be integrated with an iPhone® app and cloud computing services that would enable photos and videos that people had only dreamed of, even with the best digital cameras.

The Seed Stage

Graduating from his workbench, Gordon moved “global headquarters” to the Northborough MA Public Library from which he enlisted other members of the YOUBIQ team and coordinated all aspects of the fledgling enterprise.

The rotunda of the original entrance to the library captured with an iPhone and the Gymbl Pano.

More recently, branch offices have been opened at various Starbucks outlets in the Greater Boston area. The core team and advisors have also expanded. More than a dozen people are now working on all aspects of YOUBIQ.

Our Mission

Our mission is to be a leader in the evolution from cameras to smartphones beginning with the iPhone® 4. This mission is not just to obsolete today’s point-and-shoot digital camera, but also to bypass the home PC and treat it as just another device on which you can view, edit and share your images.

So…

Have we moved Global Headquarters? I hope not, at least not in spirit. Thank you Jean and thank you to the staff of our first “Global Headquarters”.