In a recent episode, the Cycloramic app had the Shark Tank investors practically falling over each other trying to “win” the investment in Egos Ventures, the app’s developer. If you’re a fan of the show (as I obviously am), you’ll know that that almost never happens.
I first heard about Cycloramic, from--where else--a teenager. It was at a friend’s family get-together at the holidays, and people were sitting around a table that must have been 12 feet long. He showed how you can prop an iPhone 5 or 5S (but not the 5C, because of the contoured edge) on its end, fire up the app, and tell it to take a picture. The app uses the phone’s ability to vibrate to rotate the phone 360 degrees, taking pictures as it goes along, and then stitching them together for one panoramic. I was stunned by how well it worked, but thought it was mainly a cool party trick.
A month later, the app’s Shark Tank episode airs and the app jumps to number one on the paid charts. When the episode was filmed (June 2013), the app had ~600,000 downloads. The app now tops more than 8 million downloads, with more occurring due to the show’s airing.
