Snowball

Founded in 2014 by Anish Acharya and Jeson Patel, Snowball developed a mobile application for the Android operating system designed to streamline and manage the influx of notifications. The co-founders, both graduates of the University of Waterloo, brought a wealth of experience from their previous venture, SocialDeck, a social gaming company acquired by Google in 2010. Their respective tenures at Amazon and Microsoft, followed by key roles at Google—Patel with Google Play Games and Acharya with Google+ and then as an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures—informed their approach to solving the problem of notification overload.

Snowball's core business was centered on its free Android application, which acted as a centralized inbox for messages and notifications from various social and communication apps. Initially, the app aggregated messages from platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and SMS, presenting them in a single, accessible stream. Later, the product pivoted to become a priority inbox for all Android notifications, allowing users to hide or prioritize future alerts from any given app. The application aimed to reduce the friction of switching between multiple apps by allowing users to reply to messages directly from the Snowball interface. Its business model was predicated on providing a free utility to Android users, with the company securing $2.3 million in funding from investors such as First Round Capital, Google Ventures, and Felicis Ventures to support its development and growth.

The product featured a persistent, movable on-screen icon, similar to Facebook's Chat Heads, that provided quick access to the aggregated notification stream. This allowed users to view and manage communications from services including WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram without navigating away from their current application. The system was designed to learn user preferences over time, intelligently prioritizing important notifications and dismissing others based on user behavior. In December 2015, the company was acquired by Credit Karma for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, the Snowball app was removed from the Google Play Store, and its underlying technology was integrated into Credit Karma's mobile applications to enhance their notification capabilities.

Keywords: Anish Acharya, Jeson Patel, Snowball app, Android notification manager, unified inbox, notification aggregator, message consolidation, mobile utility app, Credit Karma acquisition, SocialDeck, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Android notifications, message management, reply from notification, chat heads, smart notifications, notification prioritization, mobile productivity