John Meyer

Washington Square News wrote in 2013 that John Meyer began his venture into technology in 2008 as a high school freshman; Long Island Press wrote in 2015 that he had been developing apps since 2008 and had taught himself the programming languages he needed while at Schreiber High School. Rough Draft Ventures writes that he started writing iPhone apps at 13, which made him one of the youngest app developers at the time, and that by his sophomore year of high school he had coded more than 35 apps, six of which reached the top 25 list in the App Store.⁠[1][2][3]

Rough Draft Ventures writes that he wanted to attend AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s WWDC conference, which had a minimum age of 18; he recalled that he was 16 at the time and that “My dad got the ticket from Apple, flew back home and left me in San Francisco.”⁠[3]

One of his early successes was a flashlight app called Just Light; Rough Draft Ventures writes that he submitted it less than 24 hours after Apple released the API for the iPhone’s camera light. Washington Square News wrote that his company TapMedia had earlier released a flashlight app that used the iPhone’s camera flash and an underwater video screensaver app with music and information about the species shown. Inc. writes that his iPhone 4 flashlight app was downloaded 2 million times, until Apple began bundling its own flashlight app. VentureBeat writes that he built popular iPhone apps while a student and had written about 40 apps in all.⁠[3][1][4][5]

Long Island Press describes him as a Port Washington native who graduated from Schreiber High School in 2013 and went on to New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private university in New York City, founded in 1831, and one of the largest private universities in the United States.Open the full entry. As his senior project he built an app for Schreiber High School with a mobile school calendar, a teacher contact database and a notification system; Long Island Press wrote in 2013 that he was still working with the school to finalize it.⁠[2][6]

Rough Draft Ventures writes that he enrolled at New York University in the fall of 2013; Washington Square News described him in October 2013 as an NYU-Poly freshman.⁠[3][1]

In October 2013 he released the photography app Perfect Shot. Washington Square News wrote on October 28, 2013 that the app had launched two weeks earlier; it detects people’s eyes and mouths and releases the shutter only when everyone is looking at the camera and smiling, is free to download with an in-app purchase to remove ads, had received 50,000 downloads on the App Store, had been featured by Apple, and had been downloaded in more than 17 countries. Reviewers such as 9to5Mac praised it as useful for blind users, since the photographer does not need to see the subjects to know they are ready; he said, “I had never really considered how this app could be useful to people with disabilities,” and was developing a version that would describe the screen and tell the user when the camera was ready. Inc. writes that Apple named Perfect Shot one of its Best New Apps of 2013 and featured it on the App Store homepage and in iTunes.⁠[1][4]

Long Island Press writes that Perfect Shot was the 45th mobile app he had created, that it had 70,000 downloads in its first two weeks and that he earned money by charging for upgrades; the apps of his company TapMedia, LLC had passed four million downloads. The app was adding accessibility features such as voice output for blind users, for example: “There are now five people being detected in the frame. Three people are not yet smiling.” He had also started DevFund, which gives app developers a way to give back, and 25% of Perfect Shot’s profits went to it.⁠[6]

Washington Square News wrote that Frank Cicio, founder of iQ4 Corporation, had worked with him on app development; Cicio said, “Some entrepreneurs get lucky with a big hit, but some have a special gift,” adding that his best was yet to come. He then planned to expand TapMedia, add partners, find office space and build a team, ideally of New York University students, saying, “It’s almost impossible not to find people here I want to work with”; he also planned a staring-contest app pitting children against the phone and a version for friends with a FaceTime-like setup. On his motivation he said, “I just love the feeling of creating something that many people can enjoy.”⁠[1]

Washington Square News wrote on February 10, 2014 that TapMedia had released the game app Staring Contest, barely four months after the release of Perfect Shot. The app uses the front camera to detect a player’s face as two players stare at each other, and the first to blink loses; it works on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and has a high-score table and chat. He planned to add account creation through Facebook, Twitter or email, friend imports and the option to challenge strangers, calling opponents “semi-strangers” and adding, “They’re not completely random people”; he said the team was working hard on a live video chat capability, and a planned distraction store would let players buy distractions for opponents such as smashing eggs and funny noises. He said, “It’s really new and there’s nothing else that really does the same thing.” He was also preparing a redesign of Real Aquarium HD, one of his earliest iPad apps.⁠[7]

The same article wrote that he had founded DevFund, a nonprofit organization that encourages software developers to donate money to charity, and that 20 percent of Staring Contest’s lifetime profits would go to DevFund. He was already starting new projects with TapMedia, including an even bigger project expected in May; he said, “It will revolutionize journalism and news in an age of smartphones and tablets.”⁠[7]

On when Fresco News was founded, Inc. writes that the company was founded in early 2014; Gaby Del Valle wrote in The Outline on August 21, 2017 that Fresco News was founded in 2014 by the then 19-year-old Meyer; Rough Draft Ventures writes that he launched the first version of Fresco after his second semester at New York University; and Long Island Press wrote in 2015 that, as he said, the first iteration had been developed about a year earlier.⁠[4][8][3][2]

Inc. writes that he dropped out of New York University at the end of his freshman year; The Outline wrote that he dropped out of NYU after his freshman year to focus on Fresco, supporting himself with the money his apps generated; VentureBeat wrote in June 2015 that he had dropped out the previous year to focus full-time on Fresco; and Rough Draft Ventures writes that he left NYU, quoting him: “Waiting four years to get a degree before I can completely focus on what I’m passionate about is impossible in my mind.” Long Island Press quotes him: “I decided to leave to focus exclusively on building the company.” Rough Draft Ventures writes that he turned down a job offer at Apple to work on Fresco instead; VentureBeat writes that he turned down an internship with Apple to pursue his own projects.⁠[4][8][5][3][2]

The Outline wrote that he first envisioned Fresco as a new kind of journalism, premised on his statement, in a 2014 Medium post, that young people do not “read newspapers or news websites.” Rough Draft Ventures writes that the original version of Fresco was photo-heavy with little text and relied on crowdsourced content from people at the scene, and that his long-term goal was a platform through which print and TV outlets could license amateur photos from breaking news scenes. Rough Draft Ventures announced an investment in Fresco News to help it scale its breaking news coverage and build out its iOS app; the post says this followed a seed investment from an unnamed Hollywood star at the start of December, and that The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry, CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry, ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry and Al JazeeraAl JazeeraAl Jazeera is a news media network headquartered in Doha, Qatar, founded by Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani, emir of Qatar.Open the full entry America had expressed interest in running trials of the service.⁠[8][3]

On June 5, 2015, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2015 class of Thiel Fellows, twenty fellows selected from a record 2,800 applications, and he was among them. The announcement gives him as from New York, New York, working in media and crowdsourced news; he had dropped out of New York University to start Fresco News, a startup that builds 21st-century newsroom tools and helps news organizations mobilize the smartphone users who are capturing footage wherever news is breaking.⁠[9]

TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry and VentureBeat wrote on the same day that he had been named a 2015 Thiel Fellow; the program, created by PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry founder Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, supports young people who skip or drop out of college to start companies and gives fellows $100,000 and other support. Inc. writes that he announced Fresco’s app on the day he received the fellowship. VentureBeat writes that he had been a finalist for the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry the previous year but was not selected.⁠[10][5][4]

TechCrunch wrote on June 5, 2015 that he was the CEO of Fresco News, which lets people contribute photos or videos to local newscasts, features content from breaking news events around the world, and lets users accept assignments from professional news organizations. He said, “We want Fresco to be the app you open as a consumer of news when all these events are occurring.” An early iPhone app was already live, and new iOS and Android apps were due within a few weeks; newsrooms could use content already posted to Fresco or dispatch users to cover an event such as a fire or a political rally, and the article put contributors’ pay at $40 to $90 per video and $10 to $30 per photo; he suggested the work could supplement the income of people who already drive for Uber or deliver for Postmates. He said many news organizations were interested, without naming them, and predicted 60 partnerships at launch; he agreed with a comparison to the freelance model in the 2014 film Nightcrawler and said the model could be especially useful for international news.⁠[10]

VentureBeat wrote that Fresco had previously been in limited beta and had 20,000 users from the beta; 30 local outlets had partnered on the Fresco Newsroom Tool, which lets editors commission content from Fresco users, download licensed photos and videos of breaking news from social media streams and issue calls for specific content to users nearby; outlets could negotiate exclusivity deals with the photographers and videographers on the scene, paying roughly $50 per photo and $100 per video. He planned to rate and verify users based on the content they uploaded, so that vetted users could earn more from news organizations. He argued that CNN’s i-Report was not a tool people would use daily and that dispersed tools such as FlickrFlickrFlickr is a photo-sharing and photography-community platform developed by Ludicorp, formerly owned by Yahoo and acquired by SmugMug in 2018.Open the full entry, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry and Facebook made it hard for editors to find the content they need, and said, “We’re trying to empower anyone to be their own reporter of hard news.”⁠[5]

Inc. wrote on June 8, 2015 that Fresco was a crowdsourced media company connecting news organizations with amateur photographers at breaking news scenes, and that its free app would launch later that month; news outlets would pay $10 to $30 per photo and $40 to $90 per video, with Fresco taking a cut of each transaction, which the article compared to UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry’s model; media companies could also pay a monthly fee for access to the full photo and video collection, and a dispatch feature let newsrooms assign photo or video work to nearby users. He said the pricing should appeal to newsrooms buying from sources such as Getty ImagesGetty ImagesGetty Images is a visual content company headquartered in Seattle, United States, whose three brands, Getty Images, iStock, and Unsplash, license creative images, editorial images such as news and sports pictures, video, and music. Its holding company, Getty Images Holdings, Inc., was listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 2022 and has traded over the counter since September 2026.Open the full entry or the Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is a cooperative news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it is the oldest and largest news agency in the United States.Open the full entry, and said, “there’s this ridiculous stampede of journalists trying to request [photo] licenses from users on Twitter.” The article wrote that Fresco had earned $150,000 in revenue that year from trial partnerships with a small group of news organizations and projected $1 million for 2015, including a six-figure deal with a publicly traded company that owned more than 50 U.S. TV news stations; after a building collapse in lower Manhattan that March, Fresco supplied images to a local news station in Tampa Bay, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, which the company says was the first to report visually on the event. Fresco had raised $90,000 from angel investors and grown from three employees to 21 in six months, and his next goal was venture capital funding; he said, “I have a list over my desk in my office with the names of the 30 VCs and angel investors who have turned us down.”⁠[4]

TechCrunch wrote on September 8, 2015 that Fresco News, which he founded and led as CEO, had raised $1.2 million in seed funding from investors including CNN co-founder Reese Schonfeld, MediaBistro founder Laurel Touby, former YahooYahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry executive Ross Levinsohn, former NewsCorp and AOLAOLAOL is an American internet brand offering a news portal, email, and membership services. Its history dates to an online-services company founded in 1985.Open the full entry executive Jonathan Miller, Science Inc. founder Michael Jones, Fresco Capital, 1517 Fund, Social Starts and Wavemaker Partners. Earlier that month Fresco had launched a revamped iPhone app with assignment capabilities; news organizations already using its tools included the Associated Press, Media General, Calkins Media and “dozens” of smaller news organizations, and he said there was already a significant waitlist.⁠[11]

Long Island Press wrote that Fresco launched on September 8 after about two months in beta; the iOS app connects newsrooms with people carrying smartphones, who can respond to paid assignments or upload breaking news they witness. Assignments paid a fixed $70 per video and $20 per photo, with variable pricing in development; Fresco verifies location using GPS and the metadata of photos and videos, photographers keep ownership and receive credit, and news organizations pay a license fee. The company ran a 24-hour newsroom, its newsroom tool on the website fresconews.com was open to everyone, the company had grown to 24 people, focused on local TV stations and newspapers, and planned an Android version for November. He led the product team (mobile app and website), the 24/7 newsroom and part of the sales team and no longer did programming himself, and said, “Our mission is to empower anybody to be a reporter, to some extent.”⁠[2]

The Outline wrote that in 2015 Fresco repositioned itself as a low-cost wire service supplying content to cash-strapped local affiliates: stations posted assignments that app users fulfilled, and the company became known in tech circles as “Uber, but for photojournalists.”⁠[8]

Engadget wrote that in January 2016 Fresco News launched an Apple TV app delivering a curated feed of crowdsourced breaking news coverage.⁠[12]

In February 2016 Fresco ran a trial with Fox’s Philadelphia station (Fox 29, WTXF). TechCrunch wrote that the Philadelphia station used the app for weather reporting, a major fire and a segment on local history. Adweek’s TVSpy wrote on February 26, 2016 that the app lets local stations obtain video or stills of breaking news without sending a crew, notifies users when outlets need footage, and pays users when their work is used; it wrote that he was 19 when he launched the app.⁠[13][14][15]

On March 9, 2016, Fox Television Stations and Fresco News announced a partnership bringing Fresco’s Newsroom Tool Suite to 11 Fox-owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Tampa, Charlotte and Orlando. Stations send location-based assignments to nearby users through the iOS app, users go to the scene, shoot and submit, and Fresco’s content team curates the submissions and passes them to the producers of the relevant station; users are paid $50 for a video and $20 for a photo used on air. TechCrunch wrote that stations pay $75 for a video and $30 for a photo, with the remainder after Fresco’s cut going to the user; the app then gave access to more than 70 news organization partners in the U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, the company put its consumer user base in the five digits, and it had earlier run trials with the Associated Press, Media General and Calkins; he described the Fox deal as the first of its kind, and assignments were rolling out in time for SXSW in Austin.⁠[13][12][14]

He said, “We built Fresco to harness the real power of citizen journalism,” arguing that news consumers usually get only one angle on a story because there is usually one camera or reporter on the scene, while Fresco allows “multiple witnesses who are recording their own perspective,” adding a new dimension to how stories are presented. Sharri Berg, senior vice president of news operations at Fox Television Stations, said, “We’ve been trying to do this the right way for years, but all that was missing were some ambitious 20-somethings and a simple app.”⁠[13][14]

Reporting Texas wrote on May 12, 2016 that Fresco News, based in New York, had an agreement with Fox stations nationwide; users keep the copyright to their work but may not sell it to anyone else for at least 48 hours after a purchase, and during SXSW 2016 in Austin users earned more than $1,000 in total from content sales. After the Houston floods of late April 2016, he wrote in a post in the Facebook group “Fresco News Community” that users had uploaded more than 1,500 photos and videos of the storm. Johnathan Hamiter, head of marketing and community, called Fresco “an Uber for news” and said, “I think this is definitely the next wave of photojournalism.”⁠[16]

The author of The Outline article, Gaby Del Valle, disclosed in it that she had worked at Fresco for three weeks in 2016, shortly after graduating from college. The article wrote that Fresco started with three employees: Imogen Olsen, then 20, a content manager and social media editor; Jeremy Ogorek, a 22-year-old certified public accountant who became chief financial officer and who, Olsen said, had cold-emailed Meyer asking for a job; and a developer who was still in high school when he joined. By the fall of 2016 the company had more than 50 employees, mostly in their late teens or early 20s; all communication ran over SlackSlackSlack is a team communication and collaboration platform developed from an internal tool at Tiny Speck. It organizes work through channels, direct messages, searchable history and integrations, with features including Huddles, Clips, Canvas and AI assistance. Its paid service launched in February 2014, and Salesforce completed its acquisition in July 2021.Open the full entry, and the office was in Manhattan.⁠[8]

The Outline wrote that internal messages it obtained showed Fresco had missed at least 10 payroll periods between 2016 and 2017, and that employees were eventually paid for most of them. The first was in September 2016, which Meyer said in an interview stemmed from an investor backing out at the last minute; payroll was missed again in November 2016, which Ogorek attributed in internal messages to fundraising delays with the latest wire. The article wrote that Ogorek regularly assured employees that the company’s finances were fine and blamed the delays on the payroll processor needing several days of processing time and on investments not coming in quickly enough. Internal messages also showed that near the end of May 2017 the company was locked out of its payroll provider, JustWorks, for repeatedly failing to meet payroll; Meyer denied that the company had been kicked off the platform, saying Fresco “had chosen to move to another provider,” and said, “We, like every startup, have hit issues as it relates to fundraising.”⁠[8]

The Outline also wrote, drawing on the accounts of multiple employees, that in August 2016 a small band of employees began moving toward unionizing the newsroom, with demands that included a $15 hourly minimum wage, a concrete vacation policy and a full-time human resources representative; executives including Meyer met about the demands, and Olsen said they “came out of that meeting with no resolution.” Meyer denied that there had been any union effort and said he had “no knowledge” of the meeting.⁠[8]

The Outline wrote that in April 2017 Fresco announced it had raised $5 million in series A funding; the article wrote that the sum was in fact an aggregate of small investments from more than 20 venture capital investors raised in bursts over two years, and that the company then had about three months of runway.⁠[8]

The Outline wrote that on June 21, 2017, about three dozen of Fresco’s 40 employees gathered in the company’s cramped Manhattan office for a visit from one of its investors, Ashton Kutcher; the article wrote that he believed in the company’s mission to empower “citizen journalists,” and he informed staff that they would not be paid on time.⁠[8]

The Outline wrote that in June 2017 Meyer said he had “confidence” Fresco would sign a multimillion-dollar deal with Univision; in a memo on June 29 he wrote that things were “looking positive” for paychecks to go out the next day. Nine days after Kutcher’s visit, the deal fell through. In a message to staff Meyer said Univision had “screwed over” Fresco at the very last minute; he said Univision had changed the terms, effectively offering a buyout instead of a partnership, and that the terms required him to leave the company’s board; he and the board voted against the deal, and he stayed on as CEO to seek replacement funding; Univision had not responded to The Outline’s request for comment by press time. At 9 p.m. that night Meyer laid off the entire company via Slack, except for executives and anyone who wanted to stay on as a “volunteer”; in a Slack message he wrote, “This is absolutely not ending here.” The article wrote that Meyer and his executives had declined The Outline’s requests for comment since the layoffs. In an interview the day before the deal collapsed, Meyer said, “I heard a quote from an entrepreneur who said that running a startup is oftentimes considered a pain contest,” and, “Most startups fail.”⁠[8]

The Outline wrote that Fresco’s brief forays into original editorial and video work, including livestreamed recaps of political events and a videographer’s trip to Puerto Rico and Cuba for a documentary, were “costly and ultimately fruitless”; when the article was published on August 21, 2017, it wrote that Fresco News still existed but that it was unclear for how long.⁠[8]

Rough Draft Ventures writes that his mother is a professor at New York University. Long Island Press writes that he was team captain of the Port Washington Crew Team, which he credits with teaching him perseverance, saying, “It is all about mental perseverance.”⁠[3][2]

Sources give his age differently: the Thiel Foundation announcement and VentureBeat both gave him as 19 on June 5, 2015; Inc. gave him as 20 and based in New York on June 8, 2015; and a Long Island Press photo caption in September 2015 described him as a 20-year-old Schreiber High School graduate.⁠[9][5][4][2]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]