Alfonso Cobo on Creating Social Media’s Most Downloaded and Recognized Storytelling App, Unfold.
Meet the man making storytelling on social media more captivating.
Words, Igee Okafor
Photography, Vier Visuals
On the day Alfonso Cobo met with BOND OFFICIAL to record his episode, it was a particularly cold day in New York City and Cobo had just made his way from work - the Squarespace offices where Unfold, the app he had originated about 2 years ago had just been acquired.
In the last two years, the company (Unfold), has risen to great heights increasing in popularity in over a dozen countries, serving as the go to app for customizing compelling instagram stories. Today, there are over 10 million Unfold users who have accumulatively created over 100 million stories.
When it comes to what lies ahead, what this means for the brand is incontestable success in obvious expansion for every strand of the business. Revenue too, which naturally is not Mr Cobo’s most loved topic of choice being the humble and low key personality that he is.
“Unfold is product rooted in my passions photography, design, social media, tech,” says Cobo “I never thought it would become such a big business like right now. I always thought it would be something I would do as a side hustle, and just for fun.”
Cobo had just moved to New York from the United Kingdom where he studied architecture and actively worked in the industry for two years. Deciding to settle down in the big apple was because of a conscious choice he made to attend art and design school, Parsons where he studied Strategy and Business Management.
Before the actualization of Unfold, Cobo was working on a similar concept called Portfolio. The idea was that this app would be able to showcase his creative pursuits in an imaginative way in order for him to be employed.
Making the transition into heading Unfold and being credited with the company’s blueprint was only due to a matter of time. His original fixations centered around the idea of value even when collaborating with the world’s most global brands and celebrities - Abercrombie, Equinox, Warner Bros, Miley Cyrus, and Mariah Carey to name a few. “I had a strong vision of what I wanted the product to become,” he says “It’s also rooted in strong values I believe in as a product that can drive change through the stories people are telling.”
From the looks of things, this statement has remained consistent in the growth of the company. One way Unfold has been able to do this focuses on actively and intentionally prioritizing donating to social causes. This year alone, the company has been able to donate more than $12,000 to fight for LGBTQIA+ rights all around the world with their United Nations partnership.
So how does Unfold remain so uniquely distinctive and successful in a space that is so multilateral? How is it exactly that a brand like this is able to unify social media, tech and social responsibility?
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I’m a very self aware person and I try to identify where my feelings are coming from
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“We try to choose causes that are worldwide.” says Cobo “Things that have to be fought on a global scale. In the end, we are empowering our users to drive that change. It’s not me or the team, it’s actually the Unfold community driving the change.”
With the amount of realization and success Unfold has been able to amass in the last two years, it is to be assumed that it has taken unceasing hard work. This assumption raised the question of how Cobo has been able to balance the stress of what comes with entrepreneurship.
“I’m a very self aware person and I try to identify where my feelings are coming from,” he says “I understand not everyday is going to be great and I try to appreciate everything that I am doing. It has been absolutely crazy the amount of things that can happen in one day.”
When asked about some of the challenges he has faced growing the app and the company, he’s keen to point out the day to day operations of growing the team on a global scale. He says, “Dealing with people from different cultures who speak different languages.. time zones has been a challenge but I also think it has been super beneficial for the team. Diverse teams and people who think differently always drive innovation, better ideas and better ways of working”.
The subject of driving innovation is one that has become so instrumental in the success of new companies, and naturally, commercial and economic competition. However, Cobo is quite confident on what Unfold has been able to contribute to niche content creation space as pioneers.
“Right now, it’s a very saturated market” says Cobo “I’m not scared of competition because we have that edge. We understand our users, we keep really close relationships with them, and we understand those trends that are happening in young communities of creatives.”
Earlier this year on October 22nd, 2019, it was announced that Unfold would be joining forces with website building and hosting service, Squarespace. An alliance that makes a lot of sense for the mutual goal of enabling innovative ways of storytelling.
When discussing how this partnership came about, Cobo recalls the irony of when he would refer to the Portfolio app as the offline Squarespace. He adds “They were a huge inspiration for me in the beginning. They are the leaders for templates on the web and they try to empower creatives to put themselves out there and we do the same with Unfold.”
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