Smile! Photo sharing made easy (again)

At True, we talk a lot about investing in Founders rather than companies. And we are passionately committed to partnering with our Founders to help them realize the ultimate potential of their companies. So when Narendra Rocherolle, Founder of True portfolio company Message Bus, asked us for funding so he could buy back his very first company, Webshots—for the third time—we didn’t think twice about getting on board.

We have known Narendra and his business partners Nick Wilder and Julie Davidson for years, and we followed their success with Webshots during their first and second times owning the company. True also partnered with the team to seed fund Message Bus in early 2011. When it comes to amazingly talented and experienced Founders who know how to build great products with powerful teams (and fast), this trio is very hard to beat. A core part of our investment strategy is to work with great people. As part of this, we always love teams that stick together after successes, so imagine our delight when both the team and the product get to “recombine” to create more value.

It’s this commitment to each other and to innovation that has kept Webshots a relevant and profitable company since 1995. Each time Narendra and his team have gotten their hands back on Webshots, they have adapted it to fill a critical gap in the photo sharing space. The newest iteration announced last week, Smile, will allow families to seamlessly and instantly share photos across multiple devices and photo sharing apps, making a stream of photos easily accessible to social circles like parents and grandparents who may not be as Facebook- or Twitter-savvy as the rest of us. (Read more about Smile and the history of Webshots on PandoDaily, AllThingsD and GigaOm.)

Photo sharing continues to see explosive growth, and we have had the privilege of supporting several companies we believe are extremely valuable and important to the future of this space: Kicksend, Daily Booth/Batch and, now, Smile. Narendra has created a founding dream team for Smile in the form of Mike Sitrin (Spinner.com, Crackle), Josh Fraser (Twitter) and Diana Donovan (AOL, Webshots). We couldn’t be more excited to partner with this exceptional team.

To the entire Smile team, welcome to True!