Lion Tales Interview: Misha Leybovich, CEO of Trio

Misha Leybovich who studied aerospace engineering at MIT, UC Berkeley student body president, Guinness World Records finalist for the world’s highest altitude snowman, traveler to 70 countries, and the CEO of a new app called Trio. On behalf of the Lion Tales staff,  I was given the chance to speak to Misha on the phone and talk about what his app is about and how it is different from other social media.

What does Trio do, you ask? Trio makes it easy to remix other people’s assets such as celebrities, friends, and brands assets. The assets come from other apps like Instagram, Vine, Giphy, iTunes, Movie clips, and Image search, to start. This app lets you be funny and creative anytime, so you can look cool even if you are not doing cool activities all the time. This means more content by more people more often. You can see an example of a mash up video here.

I asked Misha what inspired him to create Trio, and he said, “It is a long evolution worked on for over a year. I’ve been a hobbyist for 10 years and wanted an easy way to create awesome multimedia. I realized I had a big opportunity to create an app with humor, awesome pictures and memories. Being creative without doing awesome things all the time.”

How did he come up with the name “Trio”? I was expecting to hear something about how it was just a randomly given name, but I was wrong. Misha described the name in a creative way that wowed me. “Some things or ideas are more creative solo. Some creativity is duo messaging and having a conversation. Trio, though, is you, your friend and the rest of the world and when you do that that they become part of the rest of the world.”

How would you expect certain groups of people, for example popular Vine users, to use your app? “Vine users have their audience. They can get them in and make something new using our app because the Vine user gets them engaged and spread the app out to friends.”

How is this app different from other apps that are similar to it? “There are so many photo and video apps. But one thing that they all require is for you to have your own assets. This creates a bundle of two concepts: One is to go do interesting things, and the other is to make awesome things. When those two things go together, they’re fantastic. However, what happens when we are not having awesome adventures? There’s a big creative space that’s empty right now, and I argue it can actually be a bigger space. You have to be doing interesting things, and, I dunno — that’s pretty tiring. Trio allows you to do that way more often. What’s different about our app is its ability to use third-party apps very easily, as well as how we provide value to original content.”

Trio is currently only available on iOS devices but will be released later in the year on Android platform smartphones as well.