#  Opyrus

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## Elevator pitch
Just as Calm.com helps people to meditate and sleep we help people to write to improve their life. Writing can strengthen mental fitness, improve relationships, enhance careers and energize your business. We are democratizing writing, helping people to understand why and how they can access this power and embrace writing for life. We will do this through unique content, a vibrant community and easy to use authoring tools based on an advanced online technology platform.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/opyrus
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:52244
- Last updated: 2026-06-11T05:00:14Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-12T02:09:33Z

## Quick facts
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## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:51697: 506(c) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:29011: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## FAQ
1. **what is the procedure for making another investment, but via a corporate structure? also, if i want to buy shares for each of my kids, what's the procedure?**
   - Andrew on the first question...you will need to setup another account with a new e-mail, go to make an investment, and then click "I'm investing via an LLC, etc." in Step 2. Next question, for the children, you will need to setup a separate account for each name. Let me know if we can help in any way. Onward.
2. **Why would you sponsor a company that has changed names 3 time? All same address. All same business. Fast Pencil is-was this company. Then Infinity Publishing. Fast Pencil never paid me one royalty. I paid for 10 books 2 months ago and have never received them.**
   - Zelda our apologies for any issue you may have. I have instructed the team take care of your concerns first thing in the AM. Please expect a call to resolve this immediately.
3. **I do like the whole mission-concept and would love to see something like this grow and succeed. It appears that FastPencil (now rebranded as Opyrus) and Infinity Publishing have what look like significant complaint issues: https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/conshohocken/profile/vanity-...**
   - Thomas thanks for your question. FastPencil and Infinity have been in the market for many years, as an early innovator in the self-publishing market and as the first SaaS application for fully automated/DIY publishing. Like many firms that work with the general public we have customer concerns that need to be supported. Over the years the company has done a good job of managing over 15,000 publishing customers and over 30,000 other purchasers of books or services. On a percenta...
4. **I really like this concept and I'm contemplating making an additional investment. However, I have to questions: 1) What's the overall market size? Tell me more about the market.. 2) What do you think will differentiate & make Opyrus a real success in the future?**
   - Douglas thanks for your question. See the question above which highlights the education and corporate market for wellness, for which our platform will be well suited. It speaks to what is a very large market. If you look at the Market Size slide in the "About" section of our profile you will see we estimate a Total Addressable Market of over $11 Billion. In fact the potential market is much larger than that when you consider the myriad of benefits that can be gained from using different types...
5. **I like the overall concept and think that it is a cool idea. In addition to being positioned as a self betterment application, have you considered the education market segment? I teach college students and many struggle to write proficiently. I partly attribute this issue to l...**
   - Scott thanks for your question. Wow...you have picked up on two very compelling markets. The wellness technology segment saw $2.2 Billion in investment in 2019. The overall wellness market is estimated to be $4.2 Trillion worldwide. I believe your assumption to be true, the education market is very large and we would expect there to be an accelerated need for new methods of prevention and cure given the new dangers and pressures that have emerged. We believe our products in development will p...

## Team
- Arthur Gutch (Founder & CEO)
- Jeffrey Steinberg (Director, Lead Investor)

## Recent posts
- Hear from Opyrus’ Chief Content Creator About Two of Opyrus’ Keystone Products (2021-04-02T16:53:01Z)
- Meet an Opyrus Advisor and Publishing Industry Veteran (2021-03-15T15:54:44Z)
- Hear What This Writer Has to Say About Why He Invested in Opyrus (2021-02-25T14:30:41Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Your pitch says you've raised more than $2mm in funding, and the valuation rase on Wefunder here is set at $4.05mm. Doing the math, after this raise of $150k on Wefunder, plus $2m raised (more than 50% of the valuation) the majority of the company has already been sold to investors, limiting options for growth in future rounds. Was the $2mm that was raised non-dilutive? How much equity is available for future raises?
  - A: Patrick thanks for the question. Most of the previous funding was in the form of debt with warrants which was less dilutive. Our capitalization going forward can support our needs and with some luck and execution we should be raising capital at progressively higher valuations. Please let me know if you would like to further discuss.
  - A: Patrick If you have any other questions or want to discuss this further let me know. Thanks for the support.
- Q: I like the overall concept and think that it is a cool idea. In addition to being positioned as a self betterment application, have you considered the education market segment? I teach college students and many struggle to write proficiently. I partly attribute this issue to lacking a proper foundation which has impaired their confidence in overall writing. In addition, many adolescence struggle to express their emotions and are hindered by anxiety/depression related issues. One can argue that this has been influenced by social media, COVID, and the overall current climate. Secondly, many corporations are promoting health and wellness programs for their employees. As a result, many offer various digital apps focused on physical/fitness, mental, emotion and spirital. It seems that this app would work well in that arena too. Have you determine the overall spend of the general health and wellness market segment?
  - A: Scott thanks for your question. Wow...you have picked up on two very compelling markets. The wellness technology segment saw $2.2 Billion in investment in 2019. The overall wellness market is estimated to be $4.2 Trillion worldwide. I believe your assumption to be true, the education market is very large and we would expect there to be an accelerated need for new methods of prevention and cure given the new dangers and pressures that have emerged. We believe our products in development will provide a much needed boost to students that are seeking easier and more engaging ways to express themselves. Similarly the corporate environment is seeing many challenges as the pressures of the new workplace have been percolating for years. A recent study indicated that 96% of people see a direct correlation between wellbeing, performance and life success. Writing has been proven to be very effective in dealing with many types of mental health issues and in some cases had positive impact on physical fitness as well. You can be sure we will be in these segments and many others that make up a very large set of opportunities in our potential market.
- Q: I do like the whole mission-concept and would love to see something like this grow and succeed. It appears that FastPencil (now rebranded as Opyrus) and Infinity Publishing have what look like significant complaint issues: https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/conshohocken/profile/vanity-publisher/infinity-publishing-0241-80019395/customer-reviews https://www.amazon.com/Fastpencil-Your-Non-Fiction-Book-Days/product-reviews/160746196X https://www.yelp.com/biz/fastpencil-campbell https://writersweekly.com/ask-the-expert/complaints-about-fastpencil etc. I'm in no position to gauge how serious or pervasive these are compared to the overall customer base and/or how they may have changed over time, etc., so... Can you comment on how you see these issues today and how they have been, are being, or will be resolved going forward?
  - A: Thomas thanks for your question. FastPencil and Infinity have been in the market for many years, as an early innovator in the self-publishing market and as the first SaaS application for fully automated/DIY publishing. Like many firms that work with the general public we have customer concerns that need to be supported. Over the years the company has done a good job of managing over 15,000 publishing customers and over 30,000 other purchasers of books or services. On a percentage basis our support has been pretty good and not perfect, but we would like to see every customer happy. To answer your question, one of the reasons we are doing this crowdfund is so we can evolve our business model to one that is more compelling for our customers and more scalable from a support perspective.  Approximately one year ago we saw a need and an opportunity to re-position and re-invent the business so we could better serve our customers and it is our intention to do what ever is necessary to complete that mission.
- Q: Why would you sponsor a company that has changed names 3 time? All same address. All same business. Fast Pencil is-was this company. Then Infinity Publishing. Fast Pencil never paid me one royalty. I paid for 10 books 2 months ago and have never received them.
  - A: Zelda our apologies for any issue you may have. I have instructed the team take care of your concerns first thing in the AM. Please expect a call to resolve this immediately.
- Q: Sounds like you plan on launching Write by Numbers in August/September. I assume this will be a Beta test version and you will rely on a small sample or test group via word of mouth. Will it be a test version and do you plan on doing some limited marketing for this new product? Will there be an official product launch?
  - A: Rory thanks. This has been a tough one for us in that the raise has taken longer than we expected. Our dates in the pitch assumed we would we would have closed already. What that means is that our Beta version or MVP should be out later this year. Yes, we will be doing marketing with the new product and we will do official launch.
- Q: Hi: I setup an investment on May 21st with a change on the same date, I have not seen the funds draft from my account yet - are you running several days behind?
  - A: Lisa, Thank you for your investment. If its an additional investment it could take some time to show up. The Wefunder team has told us that they are working on making this a faster process. If you send an e-mail to support@wefunder.com they will look into your concern and let you know the status. Again thanks for your support.
- Q: Mr Gutch, I think the concern raised by Thomas Kiefer needs to be better addressed in more detail. For example, in your answer to Mr Kiefer you wrote 'Over the years the company has done a good job of managing over 15,000 publishing customers and over 30,000 other purchasers of books or services.'...end quote. But the thing is the majority of your customers are not writing good reviews about their experiences nor anything good about your company. Why? Reading the Amazon reviews I was hopping to find many good reviews and I found none. If you have thousands and thousands of customers, where can I read about their good experiences dealing with your company? I want to read about why they are coming back for new business and how good you are serving them. If customers only write about their complaints, that's a big red flag right there for all to see.
  - A: Manuel thanks for your question. Quick answer, Opyrus is a new offering with a big vision for wellness through writing that we are now building and has limited customers. Critical to our offering is the development of our Write By Numbers™ (WBN) platform that has yet to be launched. Our current platform begins to deliver new content and social functionality while we raise capital to complete WBN. Candidly, in the past we relied on limited marketing of our services and heavily on referrals. We hope to do the same with our new offering. You will not find reviews for us in Amazon, but you will find them for the over 10,000 writers we helped complete their book and get published. A brief history- Opyrus is the result of many years of experience in the self-publishing, writing and technology sectors. FastPencil, which is currently a product within Opyrus was licensed by Barnes & Noble and powered their self-publishing business unit for many years. FastPencil was acquired by a public company for $18M and when the new owner was acquired by a larger public company, we re-acquired the business. FastPencil had developed great expertise in working with writers, accumulated a large database of customers and prospects, and built a formidable technology platform, but the market had become crowded, less compelling and the model needed to change. Opyrus was born after we did a deep dive and realized it was the writing journey that had the most impact on our customers not sales of books. We then began focusing how peoples mental and physical wellbeing could be dramatically impacted by writing, an activity that almost everyone does, but has simply not be codified for long-term success. A good analogy is exercise. We believe writing should be a part of everyone’s life, not a one-time event, but a continuous “exercise” to deliver mental, physical, and financial wellbeing. A long winded answer, please feel free to contact me if you would like to further discuss our plans and opportunity.
- Q: Art, as you know I am a big supporter of your business ideas. But can you give me a little more info on your new business model?
  - A: Paul thanks for question. Our business model is currently based on a Freemium model that allows writers to use the platform with limited features and then have them upgrade to a subscription option that best fits their needs. This is a monthly or annual recurring fee that today averages approximately $100. More importantly we are estimating the average annual spend will be $350 per year which includes an average user consuming 1-3 additional add-on services. The basic subscription model includes learning content, social collaboration and writing tools. With our first market segment being book creation, we include an ISBN and distribution services. Their are number of other add-on services including premium content, editorial/design services, expert assist and others. Our future product offering will include additional opportunities for revenue.
- Q: I really like this concept and I'm contemplating making an additional investment. However, I have to questions: 1) What's the overall market size? Tell me more about the market.. 2) What do you think will differentiate & make Opyrus a real success in the future?
  - A: Douglas thanks for your question. See the question above which highlights the education and corporate market for wellness, for which our platform will be well suited. It speaks to what is a very large market. If you look at the Market Size slide in the "About" section of our profile you will see we estimate a Total Addressable Market of over $11 Billion. In fact the potential market is much larger than that when you consider the myriad of benefits that can be gained from using different types of writing opportunities throughout life, from childhood to legacy. Benefits to personal relationships, business and mental fitness are all areas of life that can be impacted with a heightened socialization of writing in the individual and in our culture. As we speak. there are schools in Africa using our platform to allow students to write and publish their own books. The sense of pride and accomplishment is amazing for the children and for the adults! It is our belief that the writing journey, the ability to express oneself, and to make it permanent can have an everlasting effect on the people and the world. Our differentiator will be our understanding of the writer or the writer to be, and how we can create a lifetime solution that will accelerate our ability to write more while creating positive impacts on our lives. Practically, our writing ecosystem will make it easier for the writer to write and to socialize. We are essentially mapping the Human Writing Lifecycle and leveraging advanced technologies such as AI to engage people so they want to write and hopefully never have to fear the blank page again.
- Q: what is the procedure for making another investment, but via a corporate structure? also, if i want to buy shares for each of my kids, what's the procedure?
  - A: Andrew on the first question...you will need to setup another account with a new e-mail, go to make an investment, and then click "I'm investing via an LLC, etc." in Step 2. Next question, for the children, you will need to setup a separate account for each name. Let me know if we can help in any way. Onward.
  - A: Andrew thank you for your initial investment. I will look into the best way to take care of your request. Best, Art
- Q: Received notice back in July 2023 that the company had failed, however I am still receiving emails about new initiatives from Opyrus (now using the name Lifewrite). So what exactly is going on?