Short · checked 29 September 2026
The family-video app that became Wheel and joined Tinder.
A Santa Monica iPhone app for turning everyday phone video into shared stories, which raised $2 million in 2015 and, renamed Wheel, was acquired by Tinder in February 2017.
Ferris called itself the "photo album for your videos." Its Stompstart listing, tagged Santa Monica and saved by the Wayback Machine in February 2016, said most video apps were limited to a few seconds, or to content that was "social media worthy," while the video people actually shot was longer and ordinary: "their kids at the zoo, birthdays, hiking." The iOS app built a story from as many clips as you liked, on the phone, and friends could add their own footage to a shared event such as a wedding.
In April 2015 TechCrunch reported that Ferris had raised $2 million in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures, with Machinima founder Allen DeBevoise among the other investors and Upfront's Mark Suster joining the board. It described founder Paul Boukadakis as a director and editor by trade and said the app had quietly launched about a month earlier. Built In LA named the Austin radio personality J.B. Hager as a co-founder.
By early 2017 the company was called Wheel. On 16 February 2017, TechCrunch reported that Tinder had acquired it on undisclosed terms. Boukadakis became Tinder's vice president of special initiatives and chief technology officer Chris Shaheen a senior engineer, and co-founders Joey Boukadakis and Brian Daugherty joined too. TechCrunch cited Sensor Tower data showing fewer than 5,000 downloads of the Wheel app in total, and The Next Web wrote that Tinder was buying Wheel for its talent and technology rather than its community. Tinder said only that it would bring video features into its own app in the future.
The App Store pages for Ferris and for Wheel now return not-found errors, and ferris.tv no longer resolves.