How SpotMyPhotos Tackles Today's Culture of Instant Gratification

Today we're chatting with the CEO of SpotMyPhotos by CloudSpotter, Ryan Jacobs, which allows photographers to privately and automatically send attendees custom-branded versions of their photos either in real-time or at a scheduled future point in time. Ryan is also a founding member of the 10,000 Headshots Initiative, operating under the name The Headshot Booker. They provided professional headshots and confidence to 10,000 job seekers displaced by the COVID19 crisis, partnering with Brookfield Properties and over 200 photographers nationwide.

CEO Ryan Jacobs is going to give entrepreneurs valuable advice when building a business plan, the challenges small startups face, and how to wake up every day and do what you love.

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Transcript

0:00

How would the world's most seamless photo sharing platform? SpotMyPhotos tackle today's culture of instant gratification. Partnering with the Headshot Booker spot. My photos partnered with over 200 photographers at over a hundred nationwide Brookfield properties locations. To provide 10,000 Headshot photos to job seekers displaced by the COVID-19 crisis to include with the resumes on LinkedIn. For example, people who include headshots on LinkedIn received 21 times more profile views. And you might be asking yourself what is SpotMyPhotos. So let's talk to somebody extraordinary today. We're talking to the CEO, Ryan Jacobs but before that, put yourself as a guest at an event. And the photographer asked to snap a photo of you, and you might be thinking maybe if I'm lucky I can email the photographer and I can see my photo at some point. But what SpotMyPhotos photographers can send attendees custom branded versions of their photos in real time for every photo they appear in throughout the event, just by getting their phone number once. So we're talking about their recent partnership with Canon and all that good stuff. But beyond the product, Ryan is going to talk to us about the challenges of a startup advice for raising money. And Ryan is going to give entrepreneurs advice on building a business plan and how to wake up every day and do what you love. Welcome to Funktastic Chats. I'm your host, Mike Zabrin. And each week I meet up with industry leaders within the creative field to help you build your brand, automate your business, to allow more time for what you love, how to convert more leads and how to thrive in what you do. You are extraordinary and you're going to love what we've got for you today. Don't go anywhere.

Mike: 1:43

Today we're talking to CEO of SpotMyPhotos by cloud spot or Ryan Jacobs SpotMyPhotos allows photographers to privately and automatically send attendees custom branded versions of their photos either in a real time. Or at a scheduled future point in time, in most instances where use professional event, photos are accessible on the phones of those photographs. Within five seconds of being snapped. It's about my photos is licensed to event organizers photographers. Photo booth companies, venues and other photo industry partners. Ryan is also a founding member at the 10,000 headshots initiative this past summer operating under the name of the Headshot Booker the initiative provided professional headshots and confidence to 10,000 job seekers displaced by the COVID-19 crisis. They collaborated with over 200 partner photographers at over 100 nationwide Brookfield properties on what was a deeply meaningful single day initiative. So we're talking to the CEO. Ryan Jacobs Hey Ryan, how are you? Welcome to the podcast.

Ryan: 2:46

thanks, Mike. It's great to be here. I enjoy listening to your first podcast in the service with party slate, and I'm thrilled to be here with you.

Mike: 2:52

Oh, yeah, we have a mutual friend. Yeah, we'll get it. We'll get into that for sure. I want to know what's a day in the life of Ryan Jacobs what are the different hats that you wear as a CEO of a tech company?

Ryan: 3:03

Well, first of all, I'd say a day in the life for me is I live and breathe. This business. It's been a passion of mine. It's always on my mind content shifts from day to day and the contents of my day has definitely shifted. Relative to what it was like pre COVID. And so I guess my days now are a little bit different than they were. Either way I wear a full range of hats. My strengths and my interests tend to lie in business development, partner support and product management. And so those tend to be the areas that I put most of my time into. But I also work on other aspects of the business yesterday. I was working on a new marketing video. For our licensees that highlights some of the contactless photo sharing that we do. And last week I was working with a partner at the law firm that that we engage with on a continuation of part for one of our patents. Liked the variety, definitely shifts day to day.

Mike: 4:00

What types of tasks did you find you were able to outsource that you necessarily weren't able to do. At the beginning of SpotMyPhotos.

Ryan: 4:08

Yeah. At the beginning, obviously you're a small operation and you do everything at a certain point. Our business began to take on a life of its own. Different people that I hired began contributing their ideas to the business and things just like I said, they took on a life of their own. One of the coolest areas that I was able to entrust others to to work with was in product development. And then also in support for conferences No w we can talk more about how SpotMyPhotos evolved, but I do want to mention that at a certain point, we made the leap from fulfilling local events in Chicago to being a scalable platform that people could use anywhere. And I came across by way of introduction, someone that was operating out of Texas, running a company called made at events who. Had experience turning technologies into commercially viable products. And that was a big inflection point for us as a company. And for me personally, when I was able to turn to Sean and Amy Kelly down in Dallas to leverage their experience in adding new features to our product. And then essentially they helped us to go to market with conference support as well as As I was able to entrust other people to run with important parts of our business.

Mike: 5:27

And SpotMyPhotos, they did start in Chicago Right?

Ryan: 5:29

it depends on when you say we started we definitely have some of our DNA that's connected to Atlanta, to a business. I was right down there. And then the main thrust of the concept formed while I was at business school in Ann Arbor. But but we did incorporate and start growing in Chicago and spent the first, five years of our incorporated life in Chicago.

Mike: 5:52

Well, we do have a mutual friend from the Chicago area and she was a recent guest on the podcast. Julie Novak, the CEO of party slate and party slate is a website that actually inspires people, planning events, and connects them with the leading event professionals and venues across the country in the world. And brides grooms, gala chairs and others use party slate to browse thousands of curated photos to find ideas and trends for their next event. And people can save their favorite photos and then discover and contact local event professionals that can really bring their party to life. So now that sending photos to people, it's an absolute breeze with SpotMyPhotos you is the photographer can really now spend the time to build your business, build your digital presence by uploading them into galleries in party slave. But Ryan being Julie's first startup party slate was something for her where she was billing the model and obsessing about party slate for, I think about five years before she quit her executive job. And I was wondering for you, what was the process as far as turning the SpotMyPhotos into a full-time passion and career like it is today.

Ryan: 6:52

So I think it's interesting that you bring up Julie. She's obviously in the events industry and I knew Julie, I met with Julie before she left vibes. And she told me about her idea for party slate and in a similar way, I had been ruminating on this concept for SpotMyPhotos for a long time, in terms of the process for turning it from a full-time passion to a career. It's been a passion for 15 years in, in different ways where I've thought about it, but it wasn't until I was in business school and had the luxury of time there that I was able to really map it out. See different directions that it could go. And I decided that I didn't want to operate with regrets this is something that I wanted to pursue coming out of school. We built an initial platform in Ann Arbor and then we ran an R and D unit in Chicago when I moved back to Chicago and we were sending out photographers to. To shoot at events, with this technology that we had, but it was still at that point very much a passion. I was putting more money into the business then was coming out. And it really wasn't until probably about two years ago that it solidified into what was a career it was scalable, commercially viable and where we were interacting with other photo industry partners in a way that enabled me to think of it as a career.

Mike: 8:08

There's one common theme between all of the different. Startups, CEOs that I've talked to is that it all starts from the love of it. It all starts as a passion. Nobody just sets into it just to make money out right out of the gate. They do it because they, at this point, they've thought about it and obsessed about it for so long that they can't see yourself doing anything else. That kind of the feeling that you got to.

Ryan: 8:32

That's definitely the feeling. I think for me certainly the events industry is a passion of mine. But I think what I'm more passionate about is just solving problems. And so I think that a lot of the things that I've done with cloud spot or some of the other entrepreneurial projects and companies that I've been involved with has been that process of problem solving which can be applied elsewhere. But in particular, sure, the events industry is something that I've known. I'm passionate about people, about community, about memories. And I've just always had this itch that th there has to be a better way. I saw. There was an inconsistency with what people wanted and what people were getting. And to a great extent, technology has been able to allow definitely us but any business to to get closer to addressing those underlying, consumer needs and preferences.

Mike: 9:20

Yeah. As creatives, one of the things that we want to be able to do is be able to share our work with the world. You know, In my case, I'm a musician getting my music heard or an artist. Went to school for music, but I went to Columbia college in Chicago, so I was around. Creatives just all the time from different industries. A photographer, being able to showcase their work at the speed of a smartphone, which is really revolutionary and photographers all over, have added SpotMyPhotos to their workflow. Can you talk to me about your background and how it eventually led you to start? SpotMyPhotos.

Ryan: 9:54

sure. So I would say at the time it, it didn't seem like there was a clear like there was a clear connection between some of the things that I was working on, but in retrospect, a lot of the things that I was working on in college and right after college led exactly to spot my photos. For me, it was really the vantage point that I got being in both the events industry, as well as the event photography industry coming out of college, I had run a startup that was, it was really just a that had all the links relevant to students in one place. And we did it for Emery. And one component of that was we had some galleries for people's event photos. I saw an opportunity to use some of the new technologies to create our own event photography company. So I had some early experience working with technology, starting at campus. Event photography company. And then immediately after college, I I was fortunate to to join forces with some folks that were running a large-scale event, production company. They ran a huge new year's party, big Halloween party, and I was able to help them to grow the business to infuse it with a younger generation. They were both a little bit older than me. And we were able to use some cool new technologies. And so I guess through all of this, I was working with photos.. And it was clear to me that there needed to be a better way to access photos faster. It was clear that there was a time value to photos that people want them right away, but there wasn't a clear way to do that. So I realized that there was a future in what I thought was automated private photo-sharing I saw it as inevitable. It was clear to me that camera manufacturers weren't doing it, but smartphone capabilities were going there pretty quickly. And there was just a gap in the marketplace. I fi which were those orange wifi SD cards was an early mover working to enable seamless sharing of photos. And we also saw that some people were hacking into Canon cameras. There was a company that your warranty would be voided, but they would enable your camera. To use wifi outside of of the controlled use that the camera manufacturers were offering. These things helped me do see the opportunity so the juices were flowing. Took me a few more years to actually do it as other technologies emerged, but that was the impetus for for bringing SpotMyPhotos to market.

Mike: 12:15

My guest at an event and somebody, a photographer takes a picture of me. I enter my phone number once, I give it to my phone number to the photographer once. And then the rest of the night. I will have on my cell phone pictures of me at the event throughout the entire evening. And people are used to facial recognition technology from smartphones. It recognizes your face. You hold your face up to it and opens your phone, but actually SpotMyPhotos up until recently. I know you guys have another option that you guys launched recently, but it's the farthest thing from facial recognition and it uses other types of patterns to deliver photos. What are those patterns and how does it play into privacy for people who are getting their picture taken?

Ryan: 13:00

Okay. So the short answer of how this is accomplished, we were initially using a methodology of based detection plus pattern recognition, and there were a few factors coming into play, which led to that decision. The first was a core value. Privacy was very important to me personally. As well as from my experience operating and event photography business, I knew how important privacy was. we get calls of people asking that photos be removed because in trying to get photos to people automatically and get them their photos and not other people's photos. Facial recognition is the obvious answer. However it was creepy back in 2014 it was associated with Facebook so Facebook is not very private and we want it to be the opposite of that. We wanted to use everything, but facial recognition to begin with because of how people looked at facial recognition. And because we incorporated Illinois and Illinois has the strictest biometric privacy laws. We had put the challenge to developers, both at the university of Michigan and Northwestern university. How do we deliver photos to people rapidly and in an automated fashion without using facial recognition. And so one of the methodologies that had come out of Northwestern was to use face detection and pattern recognition. It's called scale and variant feature transformation. And it looks at the color spectrum and features and it was pretty neat. Of course, there were drawbacks to this, and sometimes people wouldn't get all the photos that they were in. Or if people were all wearing the same team shirt or men's formal wear there would be issues. So eventually we did migrate to using facial recognition, but still leverage components of our old platform and use contextual information as well as some of these methods to, to what we call go beyond facial recognition. So I'm sorry if that was long-winded, but

Mike: 14:56

No. That's great. So as far as the privacy is concerned, the photo sharing system is only at the event or the company level. In other words, I'm not going to go to a wedding in Chicago. SpotMyPhotos is hosting the event and then go to a wedding in Indiana then the next night or something. And SpotMyPhotos is going to remember my face from the night before

Ryan: 15:18

Right. So it's private based on the event. Also no recognition takes place until the attendee that wants to receive your photos clicks through requesting them.

Mike: 15:29

What about the photographers? They don't want to deliver their photos right away because they want to edit them. Is it possible to add branding to the event? Is it possible to add a photographer credit it's positive, go back and edit it. What are you, what are your thoughts on that?

Ryan: 15:45

All of the above, so to answer your question on customization. Yes. We call those overlays and we allow operators to custom brand a gallery, so that when you're looking at a gallery, it could be on brand with the theme of the event, which is neat as far as a photographer preference in either delaying the sharing of a gallery or Or if they want to edit photos, these are things that can be done on our platform. We've got an instant sharing mode. And then we have a couple of moderated sharing modes where in a lot of cases like case of a wedding, a photographer can be doing SpotMyPhotos and spotting people, registering people during the event. But instead of receiving their gallery, they had received a text that says that they've been spotted. And as soon as the photographer finishes processing, the photos they'll receive a link to their gallery. Our platform is collaborative. So we are seeing that some photographers as they're shooting, they've got team members that can be editing photos and then uploading on the approved photos. And in some cases, if there's, let's say a an event where they don't want to share photos until the end a photographer can decide at what point they want to send out a message that gives everyone the gallery link.

Mike: 16:54

To imagine this has to save just a ton of admin time on the photographer's end. And it allows them to focus more on what they love, which is taking the photos. I have photographers reached out to you and let you know how much admin time they've saved using SpotMyPhotos.

Ryan: 17:11

Yeah. People love SpotMyPhotos. It cuts out all the work of sending photos and galleries later and satisfies that need for instant gratification that people have, whether it's the client or individual attendees the most common question asked to photographers is, when can we see the photos? Where are the photos going to be? With SpotMyPhotos you could say check your phone, or, at the end of the event you'll receive them. Definitely cuts down on time. There.

Mike: 17:37

That's amazing. Being a wedding professional myself, I think sometimes I annoy photographers and I'm like, Hey, are the pictures ready? Are the pictures ready? Are the pictures ready? And sometimes I think if I messaged them on Instagram or LinkedIn or something, I'll get a different answer, but it's nice to know that whenever they're ready, they just get shot to my phone. I see a lot of photo booths at events and it's nice, it gives guests the chance to leave the dance floor for a moment, but to be guest and to be captured during a special moment, let's say you just saw your friend at a cocktail hour, you haven't seen in 10 years, and then they get a photo five seconds later. There's actually a statistic, 97% of users. The view of their photo gallery during the event. So I assume that there's just has to be this huge entertainment value that is just upping the excitement and prestigious business of these types of events.

Ryan: 18:23

People take the time to take pictures and no one wants to wait for their photos. And if you could be delivering photos in real time, there's definitely an entertainment value to it. And we call this interactive photography photo booths to begin with are interactive. And there's nothing not to like about receiving your photo now instead of, in a few days or not receiving it at all.

Mike: 18:47

During the COVID era is when I really use this time to focus on how can I make my business better through expanding things like my digital presence social media, new music we learn has SpotMyPhotos use this time to double down on either expanding the business or building new technology.

Ryan: 19:08

Those two things are where we have doubled down. We've worked on building new technology, different optimizations within our platform, new features. Lots that relate to, COVID specifically. SpotMyPhotos his contact list to begin with, but we added the ability for people to self register through QR codes or through links that can be sent in advance during or after an event. So yes, on building new technology and features, and then in terms of expanding the business. Obviously there aren't as many events going on. We still see events every week. But you know, we're seeing maybe 10% of what we had been saying. So at this time, it's it's a great time for collaboration with some of our partner companies and and with other photo industry players. So we've looked at integrations, we've done some really fun projects enabling people to use our technology in different ways.

Mike: 19:58

Speaking of integrations. I saw a really awesome YouTube video of spot my photo on Cannon's YouTube channel. And I know spot my photo works for any camera with an SD card, but you guys recently partnered with Canon and I read that you got to sit down with their engineers. What is special about the Canon integration in particular?

Ryan: 20:18

so it was a milestone for the industry. And I'll talk about that in a second, but really what's SpotMyPhotos does is two things. So you get photos to the cloud. And then we get photos to those that they're relevant to the first part, getting folks to the cloud is surprisingly difficult. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and so we literally and tried everything. To do this. We made the decision to invest in wifi SD card technology. And literally like the day that we debuted this at a conference, we were approached by cannon who wanted to speak about directly integrating with their camera.

Mike: 20:52

I was going to ask you about that. Yeah.

Ryan: 20:54

Yeah. It was an incredible moment. And it was awesome. We worked with their engineers and were able to pull off an integration in less than a month. And we debuted it at CES that following January. So it was a big moment for us in terms of legitimacy for our company, but also it showed how cameras could become cloud enabled. And this represented the first time that a third-party application directly integrated with the operating system of a camera. Wifi has been around for these cameras for years, but they've been closed systems that can't do fun stuff they can't integrate with other cloud platforms. So we helped to develop that solution with Canon and are proud to say that as of May, 2019, all Canon cameras out of the box, Are compatible with SpotMyPhotos. We have these SD cards that we're still shipping out to people, but for those that have Canon cameras, particularly now the R five and the AR six, which are awesome mirrorless cameras they can connect directly to our app, into our platform.

Mike: 21:57

Remembers those milestone moments in their career and being approached by one of the biggest camera companies in the world has, it's gotta be something you will always remember as a CEO of SpotMyPhotos. What was their, what did they say? What did they say to you when we

Ryan: 22:12

was, it was awesome. And I think there's a lesson to be learned here when I was at this conference. And we were approached. I remember I was being defensive at first. I didn't want to share with them all that we were doing because people in the industry, sometimes you don't want to show all your cards. But met some great folks over there. Ricardo Chen and Mike early working with them, they moved to like a startup and we moved quickly on several initiatives following our time together at CES. We worked together at imaging and and they hired some SpotMyPhotos photographers as well as their own . We did an event where SpotMyPhotos was being used and it was just blowing the minds of the people that were there, because it was an audience of photographers. We really enjoyed working with them and yes, to your point, that's something that I'll never forget. And we continue to work with Canon on several initiatives.

Mike: 23:03

There are so many photographers that have become ambassadors for SpotMyPhotos because they loved the product so much. Did you see the same reaction? that you got with Canon from other photographers also at that event or just in general?

Ryan: 23:20

Yeah. There is a universal aha wow moment that accompanies the first time that someone receives photos in an automated private way where boom seamlessly you're sending photos to someone's phone they're branded, and then they could turn around and take a picture with a different photographer and then pull off a magic trick and show the person next to them. Boom, this is on my phone. It's incredible. So that's been fun. And when people see it and experience it they enter that futuristic photo-sharing world and become a part of our community.

Mike: 23:53

Well, it, regardless of profession or what industry you're in, COVID-19 sent millions of Americans to the unemployment line without warning. That's why SpotMyPhotos partnered with Headshot Booker and Brookfield properties to coordinate the largest single day photo initiative to provide 10,000 unemployed Americans nationwide with a free professional Headshot to include with their resumes and post to job sites, such as LinkedIn, according to LinkedIn, people who include headshots received 21 times more profile views. And nine times more connection requests. So Ryan talked to me about the partnership about providing SpotMyPhotos to over 200 photographers to make this happen.

Ryan: 24:37

This was an incredible project, probably one of those projects in my life that I'm most proud of. It involves people that I've been working with and that I had wanted to work with for quite some time. And obviously COVID hit in April Peter Hurley and Tony taste who are We're part of the Headshot crew. Said they wanted to do this. This was Tony's brainchild that he wanted to do 10,000 head Chats leverage all these photographers, deliver them to people that day. And accomplish this, all this whole project in one day. And so they wanted to leverage the SpotMyPhotos system, wanted to see if I wanted to be involved. And the answer was, yes, it was a winning idea from the start. It had a feel good component. It was a natural fit for using our technology. I've never seen a project come together so quickly in line with the original vision. And I've never seen a project that when asked if other people would be involved where every single person or company or industry sponsor that we asked, said, yes, And so it was a meaningful photographers were hurting, wanting to get out there. And they wanted to do something for their community. Individuals had lost jobs. It was a very uncertain time. And this was one way that we were able to help people by delivering confidence to them, by giving them the kind of headshots that might cost a company, $500 or up for their C-suite. And that quality was delivered to people that needed it most

Mike: 26:09

wow. And you guys also partnered with Brookfield properties to set up vacant spaces within their malls all across the country for you to use. Is that right?

Ryan: 26:16

It was incredible. So I've got to give credit to Lauren Lieberman who I believe had done work with Brookfield. The biggest operational question was, how the heck are we going to do this with different people's venues? How are we going to make sure it's safe? Do we really want people going into all these studios? How do we deal with social distancing And so Lauren had gotten Brookfield on board and they were an incredible partner. They got behind the effort with their social media channels with bringing in other people, with inviting people, to it, talking to the media. It was great. A lot could've gone wrong. And we didn't want to be on the news for being a super spreader event. It was done well. I'm so proud of of how it came together. It just took on a life of its own. And yeah, it was an awesome project.

Mike: 27:00

Well, instead of being on the news for that, you guys were actually featured on the today's show for helping 10,000 people create a new digital handshake to help them find a job. What goes through your mind when you see this project on the today show and all the people that you've helped.

Ryan: 27:15

It was emotional. It was photographers doing what they could to help there was just a feel good atmosphere. And again, it was meaningful just reading about people, even after people would write us that they got a new job and they love their Headshot and it really helped

Mike: 27:29

you have forged so many meaningful partnerships with different companies, different photographers and the wedding industry. And as a musician marketing myself throughout the years. I can tell you that as a musician, you need to be seen and that means making yourself available to play whatever clubs showcase having great profiles on sites like parties, slate, or having great audio and video quality. What are some of the best strategies that has worked for SpotMyPhotos to get new technology in the hands of photographers?

Ryan: 28:03

Great strategy for us has been to let people experience it. Period. Put the camera system in the hands of photographer and then let them go do their thing. And it's like a a toy they're in like a candy store, just having a blast with it. I want to answer the question though, from the perspective of a photographer which which is more analogous to event professionals What is neat about SpotMyPhotos is that, yeah, it's a cool technology. And people love receiving their photos, but it opens up the door for interaction between the photographer and potential clients. So SpotMyPhotos is really, a lead development tool. It's a business development tool and we have partners that have done very well. With taking the time to interact with people. If you're at an event and photographer and shooting with SpotMyPhotos and someone is impressed with it we encourage photographers to talk to them and say so what do you think is this your first time experience of this? Where can you envision this being used? And that type of conversation leads to engagements for photographers. And I would say to the same point for other event professionals that have different services. When you see that you've made an impression on someone rather than just move along take the time to interact with them. And by no means, am I encouraging anyone to open up a hotdog stand at one of their clients events and start passing out flyers and selling their services. But but if you are covering what you need to for the client the rest of your energy tactically should be spent looking for avenues where you might be able to develop business. You need to do that in order to grow your business and grow your clientele.

Mike: 29:43

What do you say to the entrepreneurs who are building a business plan for their first startup? Some startup owners are very forthcoming with me here saying that. Startup won't be profitable for years to come. How much of an investment in your experience in the beginning is too much. What's the right amount. What advice do you have on that?

Ryan: 30:03

My advice Would certainly be to follow your passion whatever that means. If people are happy and truly engaged by what they're working on, you're, you're going to be more likely to succeed. In terms of building a business plan for a startup, I'd say before jumping in, definitely think it out from different angles. I would advise the people get a whiteboard. And just start mapping things out and making tweaks here and and there, and then I would encourage someone to do research and look to see what else is out there. And some people would see, Oh, this is already been done just because something's already being done or being done in a similar way. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea to the contrary. It means it is a good idea and that there's market validation for it. And by reading up on, on what other people are doing, particularly with startups by reading up, you'll see, Oh, this is interesting. This person's doing this too, but instead of doing this, they're doing this. Why are they doing that? Oh, that's interesting. You'll make tweaks to the things that you had originally white boarded and thought through. So I would encourage everyone to iterate and. Prototype your vaporware or your business model in your own head before you start building it, because that could be very expensive to then backtrack and do different things. So I would say to think it out other advice would be to talk to other people. A lot of people think, I don't want to tell anyone, I'm going to make someone sign an NDA. I'm going to do this or that. And NDAs in some cases definitely makes sense. But what I would say is that you really need to be strategic with who you speak with talk to people that have different vantage points, so you can get different perspectives. And then at a certain point you'll decide that this is worth pursuing. And if you are pursuing something, I would encourage you to find other like-minded individuals, a community an innovation hub like 1871 or in our case now embark collective in Tampa that you could be a part of that has supporting resources to help you to succeed. That's what I would encourage people to do

Mike: 32:05

I got to say, Ryan you are the whole reason why I decided to start this podcast and I'll tell you, I'll tell you why, because, I went to school for music, but there was zero business classes offered in music school and. The way that I've been learning is from people like you coming on here and sharing this information with me. So I hope, this is going to be a longer relationship between you and I. You have so much experience outside of SpotMyPhotos like Dell and Microsoft, whether it's marketing strategy, product strategy. Did these positions that you've had in your background teach you these vital steps in creating a business.

Ryan: 32:52

So I, I wouldn't say those particular experiences did, but what other experiences were very valuable? I spent some time working with a Chicago based company called sandbox industries and and I learned a ton from From Darren Newfield and Jordy Gamson in Atlanta who were the founders of spiral entertainment who I joined and they were gracious and take me under their wing, but any experience that people have allows them to learn. And I would equate different roles and jobs and different projects. It's almost like a form of dating and when you're. Experiencing these different things. There's some things that you learned that you like, some things that you learned that you, don't some things that you learn about yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses, and that stuff all becomes a part of your journey. So yeah, I would say that all, all of my past experiences have. Contributed to who I am and and the same is the case for everyone else. So I would encourage people to if you have something that you're passionate about that you're thinking, should I do this? Should I not go for it? I always encourage people to try things, but there's also a cost to try and things and I would encourage people to think it out and think about how much money something might potentially cost totally jumping into an entrepreneurial endeavor that might have on relationships, particularly the people that might depend on you, who might care about you, the stress that you have also becomes their stress. Those are maybe some things to think about.

Mike: 34:15

As far as the types of things to expect when I'm launching a startup. I know you've touched on a few, but whether it's an emotional investment, a time investment, a financial investment and then what do you do when things go wrong?

Ryan: 34:27

Things will go wrong as we all know. It's hard because you are putting in a lot of energy trying to make something go right. And so it could definitely be frustrating, but, similarly to some of the other things that we've talked about it's a learning experience. Along the way, you learn from the things that go wrong, you learn about yourself. And I would advise that, you know, your weaknesses and work to strengthen them or find others that can compliment your strengths in the process. But It's hard. I had the luxury of thinking about SpotMyPhotos in business school, it's not like I, I left a full-time job.

Mike: 35:05

So SpotMyPhotos officially launched seven years ago. Is that correct? If you can go back in time to 2014, when you first launched your company, what is one thing that you learned over the years that you would go back and tell your past self.

Ryan: 35:22

Probably a lot of things ahead of time, mission if I had DeLorean I would say one thing if you are creating a digital startup where you're going to need significant capital, I would advise everyone to not raise money and try to operate a business at the same time. Take the time to focus on raising money, take a systematic approach to raising money. Just Google it. There are a lot of services methods for doing so it's going to be a numbers game and it's going to be a journey, a great company called founder suite. I would advise anyone to check out the first person you talked to that says they're in, is that's toughest to get to that point. But once you do it's easier for other people to go in on the venture as well. And then at a certain point, it becomes very easy for other people to jump in. You're already raising money with these people I'm in as well, I'm in as well. And so I would also advise raising more than you think you need in our case. We did a few rounds and It was never my goal to raise that much money. I thought that we'd reinvest money that was coming into the business and we've done that. But but the times that we have raised money we would have definitely been better off raising more and, the incremental time it would have taken to raise more money then wouldn't have been, as great as going out and starting a whole nother round, which we did a few times as well.

Mike: 36:47

Ryan Jacobs thank you so much for talking with us today. Thanks for coming on the podcast. You can go to www dot SpotMyPhotos dot com. It works with any camera with an SD card and. I have a Canon camera. You just got a new tool to play with. Ryan thank you so much for coming on the show and I can't wait to stay in touch with you and talk to you soon. And that was Ryan Jacobs of SpotMyPhotos go to www dot SpotMyPhotos dot com. And if you click on the licensing tab there, they have annual monthly and pay per event plans, cater to a variety of needs.. Proton prefers all across the country are using SpotMyPhotos and it's really a pioneer in automated private photo sharing. And I don't think there's a more dedicated team out there. People who are constantly improving ways on how people are gaining access to their photos. Thank you for joining us. My name is Mike Zabrin and if you love the podcast, say do me a favor. Go on Apple podcasts and leave us a review. Tell me what you think of the show . Be safe, be extraordinary. And we'll see you next week.