In early 2016, social media was undergoing a shift towards interactive visual content. While watching a YouTube video, Chris Schmidt caught a brief mention of a newly released Snapchat feature: custom location-based graphic overlays known as “geofilters.”
Recognizing a massive shift in demand for digital design before it became a mainstream, commoditized service, Chris moved quickly to validate the market.
Without a business name, logo, or website, Chris cold-called an engaged local couple, Romeo and Jessica, who were looking for prize donations for an upcoming wedding event. He offered to create a custom filter, and the couple purchased the design for twenty dollars.
Within hours of hanging up the phone, Chris secured a domain name, built a website on Squarespace, and launched Geofilter Studio.
Growth Hacking and the 5:00 PM Crunch
To build early traction without funding, Chris systematically growth-hacked digital forums, creating multiple alternative personas on Reddit to identify and engage with users seeking event-based Snapchat filters.
The digital grassroots strategy ignited a viral adoption curve. Within its first year, Geofilter Studio’s revenue exploded 24,000%, rapidly scaling from a basement project into a company with 85 full-time employees.
Operational execution under this level of hyper-growth was notoriously unforgiving. To add to the pressure, Snapchat had a strict daily 5:00 PM manual review deadline for graphic assets to clear their system in time for evening events.
A significant factor in the growth of Geofilter Studio was their Google Ad campaign. Chris learned how to run ads by watching YouTube tutorials and saw success right from day one. Each week, he doubled the ad budget, and, remarkably, the revenue doubled as well.
Due to his naivety about marketing, he didn’t fully understand what he had created until he received an email from Google. In terms of campaign metrics, it turned out that Chris had built one of the most successful Google Ad campaigns.
Global Expansion
The company matured and expanded into EveryStudio, diversifying into multi-platform products. The team pioneered some of the earliest augmented reality assets on Facebook and Snapchat. They also built custom iOS sticker packs that accumulated over 250 million mainstream views in the App Store.
By operating strictly cash-positive and reinvesting every dollar, Geofilter Studio became the world’s largest custom filter producer. If you used a Snapchat filter between 2016 and 2019, it was likely made at Chris’ company.
Before its acquisition in 2019, the company designed over 100,000 filters that generated over 10 billion views worldwide—serving major global enterprises, celebrities, and everyday consumers alike.
“The final push toward that daily 5:00 PM cutoff was pure chaos,” Chris reflects. “Our hands were literally sweating as we raced to finalize every order. At peak times, we were submitting a filter to Snapchat every 4 seconds. Our early team was squished into a 300-square-foot office, with 14 people working shoulder to shoulder. It was a high-stakes, adrenaline-fueled atmosphere that remains one of the most electric experiences of my life.”
