Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak invests in paper records digitiser
Automated paper-digitisation company Ripcord has attracted investment from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Ripcord manufactures machines that scan and analyse paper records to make them searchable as PDFs through companies' current systems via the cloud. Ripcord’s robots can complete the work at a cost of 0.004 cents per page per month of storage in the cloud. The process is about 80% automated and includes handling the documents and removing staples.

Ripcord has built machines that can scan, index, and categorise paper records to make them searchable through companies' existing systems, via the cloud.



Basically Ripcord unboxes the files and passes them to its machines, which scan, upload, and convert the content into searchable PDFs. Ripcord says that the conversion and classification process is around 80 percent automated and covers handling, the removal of staples, and scanning.



It all makes sense as a business and it is surprising that no one has really tried it before. After all, there are rather a lot of companies which have huge paper stores which could be valuable if they were able to be easily searched.



But what has stopped it happening is that most of the files have staples, paperclips or are shoved in binders.



Ripcord uses robots to do it at a cost of .004 cents per page -- for every month that it's stored in the cloud.



Woz isn’t known for making a lot of investments, so the participation of the Apple founder is a nice addition.



Ripcord was cofounded by Alex Fielding, who was an engineer at Apple in the 1990s.