🛠️ Joe Eitzen is a prolific tinkerer. He’s always been able to figure shit out.

💪 Sam Eitzen is a natural leader. He could rally a team to race to the moon.

If you’ve heard of the Eitzen brothers, you probably know them as the co-founders of Snapbar, an Inc 500 software company.

But let me tell you a secret 🤫 —

They didn’t found Snapbar.

Snapbar found them.

Hey founders — how did you spark the idea for your company? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

The timing was perfect

The early 2010s was a fascinating micro-era in business. The barrier for entry to entrepreneurship lowered significantly— 

In a very short period of time.

• 📱 Social media provided affordable marketing solutions.

• 💰 Crowdsourcing platforms catalyzed low-risk product launches.

• 🛠️ No-code tools enabled founders to set up operations without needing to hire tech talent, or pay agencies through the nose.

This cocktail of coincidental collisions unleashed a new brand of entrepreneur — a scrappy, ultra-niche, tenacious kind of founder who had no need to sell his soul on Sand Hill Road.

This new entrepreneur was nimble, self-reliant, and resourceful.

And if you painted a picture of this new entrepreneur, it would look a helluva lot like Sam and Joe Eitzen.

Badass parents have badass kids

Sam and Joe are no exception.

These smiley brothers shared an unpretentious childhood, playing soccer in the dusty streets of Morocco with the other local kids.

Even though their platinum blonde heads stuck out like Keith Richards at a tea party, they grew up speaking Arabic and French, and fit in without skipping a beat.

Kids are remarkable in that way.

Mom and dad were on the cutting edge of adventure tourism, leading daring westerners into the unyielding wilderness of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.

Talk about a niche market. 🤷

But when an injury ended dad’s rugged hiking days, he pivoted to photography, shooting idyllic photos of Moroccan travel destinations for Lonely Planet.

The Eitzen boys watched as their father captured moments with his camera that would later become unforgettable experiences for Lonely Planet readers who relied on those images to plan their dream adventure.

It was a responsibility that was both significant and joyful — in equal measure.

The right kind of education

Sam (being 18-months older than Joe) was the first Eitzen boy to leave the nest. And he flew pretty damn far — all the way to Los Angeles — to go to school.

Then he promptly dropped out and chased a girl to Seattle. 🤦

(No judgment here.)

Joe got himself educated in the UK, and soon joined his brother in Seattle, where they both found themselves working for a…

…wait for it…

Camera gear startup. 📸

Their bodies may have been far from home, but their hearts were definitely with good ol’ dad.

However, it wasn’t the product that attracted them to this company — it was the fact that the founder had just raised $80k on Kickstarter to launch the business.

Sam and Joe saw themselves in this guy. 👀

He had an interesting idea, and he made it happen.

He didn’t need permission. 

He didn’t need a fancy degree. 

He didn’t need a rolodex of investors, a 10-year business plan, or an infinitely scalable product.

All he needed was his idea, some Kickstarter customers, and in the early days, free labor from Sam and Joe who volunteered to work for him in exchange for a crash course on how to bootstrap a business.

Sam and Joe soon became vital assets, earning both trust and gainful employment. They helped the founder grow the company from a Kickstarter garage-hustle to a real business with $1m+ in revenue.

Then one day, they were invited to a friend’s wedding. 👰🤵 

And as they watched their pal marry his dream girl, they unexpectedly took the first step in creating their dream biz.

Here comes the bro

The groom wanted to have a photo booth at the wedding, so he turned to the tinkerer to figure out how to make it happen.

Joe was on the case.

He set up a camera mechanism that gave guests the ability to:

1. Pose with their friends against a backdrop.

2. Remotely trigger the camera to snap a photo with a “clicker”.

3. Immediately view their photo on an iPad.

The groom’s brother built a wooden box to house the mechanics, and voila! 👇️ 

Sam and Joe spent the evening helping guests use their little invention to snap memorable pics.

Since they didn’t have a website, or any way to print the photos, they simply directed guests to a Facebook page where they uploaded all the photos after the wedding.

And with a momentary stroke of genius, they called the Facebook page “The Snapbar”.

(In true Zuck fashion, they would eventually drop the “The” and just become “Snapbar”).

It was a fun little project, and Sam and Joe were happy to help out a friend on his wedding day.

That’s what friends are for. ❤️

But… we just want to party 🥺

Soon after their pal’s wedding, Sam and Joe’s friends began asking them to bring their makeshift photo booth to other parties.

It was fun at first, but then it started to get… well…  annoying. 😒

These were parties that Sam and Joe wanted to attend — not feel obligated to work at.

So in an effort to dissuade their friends from asking them to do this, they began charging them a fat stack of $99 bucks.

They didn’t actually want their friends to pay them — they wanted them to say “never mind buddy, just come hang out.”

But that didn’t happen.

Turns out, their friends were happy to fork over the dough. Dammit. 🤦

Ok, maybe this is actually a business?

One day, Sam and Joe received a message through their Facebook page from someone they didn’t know, asking for a quote to hire Snapbar for a wedding.

After a quick phone call with the bride, they decided to accept the job, and quoted her $350 (an absurd amount in their opinion).

Soon after, a check arrived in the mail, and the bride was requesting a contract.

Umm…

👉 They didn’t have a business.

👉 They didn’t have a bank account.

👉 They didn’t have a contract.

👬 They were just a couple of dudes with a camera, a wooden box, and a Facebook page.

So they registered their company (thank god the name was available, since she had already sent the check), opened a bank account, and downloaded a contract from LegalZoom.

By this point, they were working full-time (and actually getting paid) at the camera gear startup.

So they decided to hustle on the weekends to see if Snapbar had legs as a business.

They launched a website on a no-code platform, printed business cards, and started doing some grassroots marketing to get the word out.

It was a simple business with simple operations, and a simple mission of helping people capture joyful moments (while capturing some joyful moments of their own.)

And for three years, Sam and Joe managed to keep Snapbar sequestered to the weekends while continuing their full-time gig.

But after a while, it became clear — they needed to cross their fingers, and jump in. 🤞 

Um. Did we kill it?

Remember LivingSocial — that cute little competitor to Groupon?

I think the only thing I ever bought on it was a freshening float in a sensory deprivation tank circa 2014 — before Stranger Things made it cool.

I probably paid about 59 cents for an $80 experience.

Deal platforms are a race to the bottom. 🔽

But when LivingSocial approached them to run a deal, Sam and Joe thought, “What the hell, we probably won’t sell that many anyway.”

Famous last words. 😬

LivingSocial sold 50 Snapbar packages in a single day — each and every one delivering nearly zilch in profit to its panicked founders.

F*ck. 🤦

That one mistake could have killed them.

But that didn’t happen — for the same reason Snapbar was accidentally created:

The network effect. 🌐

More than just weddings

Even though they were stuck delivering LivingSocial events for pennies on the dollar, the onslaught of new business gained Snapbar priceless exposure to thousands of new customers.

Every photo experience they delivered was a marketing opportunity, frequently leading to bigger and better bookings.

While their early success had been with weddings, they soon discovered a goldmine with:

• Corporate parties

• Conferences

• And brand activations

Their clients evolved from blushing brides to tech behemoths like Facebook and Google, conferences like CES and SXSW, and consumer brands like Nordstrom and Nike.

These blue chip clients inspired them to upgrade their “camera in a wooden box” concept.

Joe began designing sleek, light, and brandable photo booths — always under the directive to make it “fit in a Ford Focus”. Being lean and nimble was vital for transporting equipment from event to event, a mistake they watched their competitors make.

The boys also began designing software that enabled the images themselves to rival the uniqueness of the photo booth experience.

Within a few years, Snapbar was dramatically more than just a couple of resourceful brothers with a camera.

Sam and Joe had managed to grow their company to 45 employees in offices across Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, and land on the Inc 500 list of the highest growth companies.

With plans to open new offices in NYC, Chicago, Miami, Orlando, and Las Vegas, they were well on their way to becoming “the Starbucks of photo booth companies.”

Well done, boys. 👏

Then the event industry shuttered — overnight. 😱 

“A lot of refunds”

That’s what Joe said when I asked him what happened to Snapbar when the pandemic hit. 🤷

While their contracts could have protected them, they didn’t feel right about making clients pay for events that weren’t going to happen.

And, like everyone else, they sat tight and watched the news, expecting things to pass quickly. Luckily, they had been smart with their cash flow, and could afford to hold out for a few months.

But when it became clear that events wouldn’t be returning 1) soon, or 2) at pre-pandemic magnitudes, they knew they needed to do something.

Sam and Joe didn’t build Snapbar because they have a passion for photography, or an interest in the events industry.

The reason Snapbar grew from a favor for a friend into an multi-million-dollar business is because they loved how it felt to create memorable moments.

They loved how it felt to put a smile on someone’s face.

So they created Keep Your City Smiling — a gift box company featuring local small businesses — to help keep themselves (and those other businesses) afloat during the early days of the pandemic.

It was awesome.

And it worked.

Play it again, Sam (and Joe)

While many of their colleagues in the event industry went belly-up, Sam and Joe’s creativity and nimbleness enabled them to stay relevant as the world began transitioning to virtual events.

They launched a virtual photo booth in June of 2020 — only a few months after the pandemic shut-downs began.

And by January of 2022, they had fully transitioned into a software company, dreaming up new and innovative ways to “put people in their Hollywood moment”.

“People like visualizing themselves in a new way,” Sam told me, as he described how he could virtually place me in an F1 car, racing through the streets of Monte Carlo.

And since it’s unlikely that I’ll ever actually drive an F1 car (without landing in a Monegasque jail), I’m relying on Sam and Joe to make this happen for me. 🤞

Their father helped people see themselves in their dream vacations.

Sam and Joe want to help people see themselves in their dreams.

It helps that they’re living in their own.

Hey founders — how did you spark the idea for your company? Join the conversation on LinkedIn. 

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

Don’t be a lurker. Hit reply to say hello.

👉️Like my storytelling? Hire me to write an op-ed.

👉️Have a story you think I should cover? Tell me about it.