iCracked -- making Millions fixing iPhones


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Millions of clumsy cellphone users have been in the situation shown in this video: One minute your iPhone?s in your hand, the next it has hit the floor and cracked! That?s where 25-year-old A.J. Forsythe comes in with a simple idea: iPhone doctors who make house calls.

Forsythe co-founded iCracked, a start-up that with a team of repair people who specialize in cracked screens.

 

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?We?re an on-demand group of individuals that no matter where you are, you can press a button and we?ll dispatch a group of iTechs to you in real-time,? he said.

The company has raised $700,000 from Y-Combinator, SV Angel and other investors. It is moving into another round of financing and hopes to raise $5,000,000.

A spokesperson for iCracked said revenue for 2012 was $2MM and this year the company says it expects to ?crack? $10MM. The company?s co-founders, recently made Inc. Magazine?s 30 Under 30 list.

At the core of the iCracked business is a network of iTechs who promise to fix your phone in a flash. Currently their network has 340 iTechs spread over 11 countries. Forsythe said thousands apply, but only 2 percent are accepted. The firm adds 50-70 new iTechs every month.

?We are extremely diligent in who we bring on and who represents us as a company?we background check every single one of them,? Forsythe said. ?We have a five-step interview process. We have a sales team that will vet them at different stages of the process."

While the company?s iTechs are popping up in lots of new cities (customers can find iTechs on the site by entering their zip code) they?re still not everywhere. For cell phone users in places like Kalamazoo, Michigan, where iTechs currently don?t make house calls, the company offers the option of sending the broken phone to iCracked, where an iTech will fix it and ship it back the same day. For people who like to take matters into their own hands, iCracked offers a Do-It-Yourself repair kit. The company also has a buyback program, which offers cash for old iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

Forsythe said he believes the potential for the service is huge. One thing?s for sure, the potential market is enormous, the world has more than 1 billion smartphones in use, and researchers estimate the next billion smartphone users to be online by 2015.

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All well and good, but I was told recently that the iPhone 5 cannot be repaired in such a fashion as the screen has a chip that is hardware coded to the phone itself?

 

If this is the case, then there goes their plan?

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iPhone 5 screens are easy as to repair nik, the problem is they are expensive compared to 4/4S. So half the time it's better to go to Apple and keep your warranty. 

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Something tells me that fixing cell phones is a lucrative business.  We have a store here that has grown exponentially in the last few years just by fixing phones only. 

 

Maybe I should drop my Computer Security Major for cell phone repair ---- NAH!  :)

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Say what you want about Samsung phones, but I dropped my GNEX off a roof several months ago and the screen cracked.  Easy and cheap to replace the glass.  All Samsung Galaxy series phones are like this.

 

Does this company fix more than iPhones?  If so, curious on how much the are making from that to.

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I used to fix iPhones for friends until the iPhone 4. Then they became a pain in the ass to replace screens on. Before you took out the screws and pulled the old screen off. Now you take out the screws and EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT INSIDE to replace a screen. Too many tiny screws for my patience, haha. I've swapped screens on an iPhone 3G at a bar even they were so easy.

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