Iris Works
“Can a photographer-built, narrowly-focused studio CRM win the vertical against broader creative-business platforms by leaning on best-of-breed embedded partners (Square, QuickBooks) rather than owning the money layer?”
Founded2014
HQIndianapolis, Indiana, United States
FoundersMeredith Gradle
IndustryVertical SaaS / Photography
The story
Iris Works was founded in 2014 by photographer Meredith Gradle to solve the CRM/admin problem for photographers, who found generic tools too complex. The company has stayed narrowly focused on photography studio management — booking, contracts, invoices, questionnaires, workflows — and has deliberately outsourced adjacent finance functions (payments to Square, accounting to QuickBooks, gallery delivery to Pic-Time/ShootProof) rather than building a proprietary financial stack.
Last 12 months
2025-06
2025-09
Product timeline
2014
Iris Works founded by photographer Meredith Gradle as a CRM built for photographers· pivot
2016
Launched QuickBooks Online integration for invoice sync· banking
2022
Enabled Afterpay (BNPL) via Square integration· lending
2025
Named Square as Preferred Payment Partner with exclusive processing perks for Iris users· banking
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Iris Works’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
3 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.