When people ask what Popsa does, I tend to answer carefully. A short description rarely does it justice, because because while it may look like people come to us to print photos, the value we deliver goes far beyond that. Popsa is a memory curation platform and a business I built to help people make sense of their lives through the photos they capture – of highs, lows and the everyday moments in between.

This framing matters because over the past decade, I’ve learned that when emotion sits at the centre of what you build, the job fundamentally changes. Instead of optimising primarily for speed, convenience, or novelty, as many technology companies do, you take responsibility for something much larger: how meaning itself is created. Popsa exists because modern life has produced a quiet paradox. We document more of our lives than any generation before us, yet we experience less of what we record. Our camera rolls are filled with relationships, milestones and ordinary moments that shape who we are over time, but most of it remains fragmented, unexamined and easy to forget.

What we’re building at Popsa is a way to navigate that chaos. Sometimes, the outcome is a
bespoke, premium album that can be held, shared and revisited with loved ones. At other
times, the value is less visible but just as real – a sense of clarity, perspective and completion. Either way, what people are responding to is meaning. Building a company where emotion carries value has shaped everything I believe about technology and growth.

Lesson 1: More photos created a new kind of anxiety
The idea for Popsa began with an uncomfortable realisation: I had more than 250,000
on my phone, and almost none of them were enriching my life in any meaningful way. We now take thousands of photos each year, capturing everything from major milestones to the most mundane moments. A reasonable expectation is that this would deepen our connection to our memories. In reality, for many people, the opposite has happened.

Camera rolls have become vast personal archives that are rarely revisited. What replaces
reflection is a low-level sense of guilt – the feeling that something meaningful is being
neglected simply because there’s too much of it. Important moments get buried under sheer
volume. This revealed a misunderstanding that appears repeatedly in consumer technology: more of something doesn’t automatically make it more valuable. When volume grows without tools to organise, interpret, or prioritise, excess becomes a burden rather than a benefit. This is the last thing your own memories should feel like.

So Popsa set out to help people shape overwhelming volumes of moments into something they can understand. That’s why Popsa is fundamentally about curation. The albums we create represent a point of resolution – the moment when many fragments come together as a story that can be revisited, shared and understood.

Lesson 2: Automation works best when it reduces emotional load
AI is deeply woven into Popsa, not as something to impress, but as a way to reduce the cognitive load people face when making sense of their memories. Much of today’s consumer AI produces impressive demonstrations that fade quickly. What tends to endure is technology that resolves something internal. In this case, it’s the effort required to sort, select and shape meaning from a mass of material.

Our systems analyse entire photo libraries and the relationships between moments. Over time, our AI learns what feels significant to an individual and helps surface those moments with context and structure. In 2025 alone, we generated more than one million ‘Year in Review’ albums – not as novelties for social media, but as genuine representations of the ups and downs of their lives.

That intelligence may eventually take the form of a photo book, or it may remain digital, but
either way, the technology is doing work people often lack the time or emotional energy to
take on themselves. When automation is applied this way, it doesn’t remove agency – customers still recognise themselves in the outcome – they simply arrive there with far less friction.

Lesson 3: Handling memories carefully builds trust
When you work with someone’s memories, relationships and personal moments, trust becomes the foundation of everything you do. From the beginning, we made choices that may have slowed growth in the short term, but demonstrated respect for what customers entrusted to us. We don’t rely on advertising, and we don’t sell or exploit data. Every design decision, product feature and notification is weighed against a simple question: does this help our customer, or does it intrude?
People notice this. Customers can feel when a product handles their lives with care rather than urgency. When they feel that, they return, they recommend and they stay. That trust shows up tangibly in over 100,000 Trustpilot reviews and in our B Corp certification – signals that reflect the standards we hold ourselves to and the premium, bespoke experience we’ve committed to from the outset.

Lesson 4: Accessibility comes from fewer decisions
One of the most revealing lessons in building Popsa has been understanding who our customers really are. More often than not, they aren’t professional designers or confident technologists. They’re people who feel unsure of their creative ability, anxious about complexity or pressed for time. Many assume they’re “not the kind of person” who can create something meaningful from their memories. In this context, more choices doesn’t help, but rather creates hesitation. Every additional decision introduces doubt, and doubt is often where people disengage entirely. We learned that accessibility comes from simplifying the path forward. By making thoughtful decisions on behalf of users, and doing so transparently, we help people arrive at outcomes they feel proud of without needing specialist skills. This approach has proven both inclusive and resilient, with people returning because they value the sense of resolution the process provides.

Lesson 5: Purpose can be expressed through a product
Popsa began as a personal response to a simple problem: the growing gap between the moments I captured and my ability to reflect on them meaningfully. That purpose has evolved, but it hasn’t disappeared – and customers notice. Today, Popsa serves millions of people across 48 countries, with the UK as our largest market, followed closely by Europe and the US. We generated $58m in revenue in 2025 – our highest growth rate in four years – and we’re now targeting $70–80m globally this year. Those outcomes flow directly from our focus on meaning. They show that emotion can scale, when treated with care.

Lesson 6: Some moments deserve to exist beyond a screen
The albums we create at Popsa give important moments a form that extends beyond a screen – a way to pause and appreciate what matters. They are one expression of a bigger purpose. Our goal is to help people explore and reflect on the events that shape their lives. For some, that means physical keepsakes, while for others, it doesn’t. What remains constant is helping people see the connections between moments, so their life story, and sense of self, becomes clear and coherent. There is real value in that, especially in a world that continues to grow busier, noisier and more complex.

Lesson 7: Emotion sets the standard
When a product carries emotional weight, expectations are immediate and unforgiving. People instantly notice if something feels shallow or forced. When done well, however, emotion creates loyalty that discounts can’t buy and advocacy that marketing budgets struggle to replicate. It has taught me that the future of consumer technology lies less in encouraging people to create more, and more in helping them make sense of what they already have. Handled thoughtfully, this approach allows a business to become more than a product. It becomes something rooted in meaning, where memories are more than data and technology becomes a way to understand life itself.