This December we hosted a Q&A with Jon Birdsong and Jewel Burks Solomon, Founder & CEO of Partpic.
Partpic is an Atlanta based computer vision startup that provides a simple way to search for parts by allowing a user to upload a picture of the part he/she is looking to replace. In 2016, the company was acquired by Amazon.
Early morning SaaS folks cozied up in the Community Center of Atlanta Tech Village to hear Jewel's story, network...and eat donuts!
As the daughter of two entrepreneurs, it was in her blood to start something and get people to join the vision. Jewel studied at Howard University in Washington DC and during a campus recuiriting event, sold herself on her creativity and landed a Google internship. While there, she was able to hone her sales skills and even went to the President of Howard to get the University to switch over to mainly using Google software (wow)!
Jewel was mainly doing enterprise sales for Google. She talked about how working at Google really helped her get out of her shell. Growing up she was rather shy, but by pushing herself in this new environment, she was able to break away from the shyness.
I had not been accustomed to hearing no. Most people were telling me no, so I just had to smile and dial.
She began traveling back and forth a lot from California for family reasons and decided to look for jobs in Atlanta to be closer to home. She connected with McMaster-Carr and landed a role as a Sales Manager, managing the sales call center.
The reason I started Partpic is because I was the person who got a lot of the escalations when we sent the wrong part out.
Customers had difficulty describing to her team what they wanted to buy. They didn't know what the part was even called. They would ask if they could just send a picture of what they needed. Customers would fax over pictures but unfortunately, they ended up losing a lot of money and they were leaving lots of money on the table.
It wasn’t day one, it was several months of feeling like this is the worst job ever. I was being yelled at by customers all day.
It took 6 months from the spark idea of Partpic, to creating and fleshing out the idea, to then believing in it.
It was 12/12/12 when I had the lightbulb moment. The first person I told was my mom. I was trying to get her buy-in so that if it failed, I could move back in.
The vision was to build a software and sell it to suppliers that were selling parts. Then, license that technology for them to embed in their mobile apps and websites. Pricing startup software can be difficult and Jewel didn't have any kind of model established. Luckily they did have some guinea pigs though, willing to test.
They said, “If you can build that, we’ll be your first customer!”
So for me, I was going all in. I loved the idea and I was very obsessed with solving the problem.
The only thing that was stopping Jewel was the money to build it. She was saving up money and scaling back her lifestyle so she could be her first investor. When things became more expensive that she predicted, she got a loan and in 2013, they had a working MVP.
We had a very, very, VERY basic MVP.
In September of 2014, they were really gaining traction. Jewel presented at TechCrunch and kicked off fundraising. All in, she raised $250K from pitch competitions.
I got on stage at TechCrunch, and that got me out and in front of people. People would come to me.
Midway through her pitching however, she realized she needed to get a job. She didn't think of it as having to go raise money, just doing what she had to in order to build a great product. She convinced Google to let her come back as an Entrepreneur in Residence which allowed her to pay her own bills and still have to time to build Partpic.
Then in 2015, she raised a Seed Round. When it came time to fundraise, her strategy was 'put circles' around people who she thought would be interested. In the end, Joanne Wilson was the first person to write a check.
We initially asked them to be a customer. This was before we were ready... classic me!
May 2016 she went back out to raise a Series A, however, they weren't the terms she wanted to see. There are many reasons as to why Jewel felt that way including, price and preferences.
She was frustrated with the experience of Series A. Then, Amazon came to the table with an offer and she had to make a quick decision.
Jewel had to get real with herself about the decision she had to make. Ultimately, she chose Amazon acquisition and now works there along her Partpic team.
The ultimate vision was to get the technology in the hands of everyone. She's now focused on helping more entrepreneurs build great products and helping them to understand funding opportunities..
Jewell didn't have enough help, as far as people who had already been through this whole cycle, so she wants to spend time with entrepreneurs and try to be a resource to others. She learned a lot but didn't know enough. She really wants to share her lessons learned with others. She is still involved in the entrepreneurially community in order to stay up to date with the cool new ideas.
© 2026 Atlanta Ventures
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