Company description
How to shoot great photos in great places. With great people...or alone.
New York | Catania
Today killer app on web and mobile is sharing photos, and people now love to share great photos.
PhotoSpotLand help them suggesting great places to do it and creating great shooting experience, with great people or...alone. We are a step above sharing photos and we don't share photos.
PhotoSpotLand is the essential instrument of where, how, what and with whom to take pictures around the world and to propose and aggregate photographers communities to share the experience.
A community where people loving photography can share best locations/events where to shoot great photos, how, when and with whom to shoot.
Are you an enthusiast or amateur or pro photographer? We will help on your journey to focus on your calling as a photographer, as you can only focus and capture the souls of your photographs.
Our users are anyone who share the Passion for photography, anyone feeling emotions shooting a photo. No matter if they are enthusiast, amateur, semi-professional or professional, including blind photographers!
They all have needs in common, and we the the solution in a web/mobile platform.
A) Where to shoot great pictures
B) How to shoot great pictures
C) Shoot great pictures.
Anyone loving photos use PhotoSpotLand to ask: what, where, with whom and when to shoot great photos.
The aim of PhotoSpotLand™ is also to aggregate the micro-communities that spontaneously grow around the most popular photo-shooting Spots to share experience and knowledge.
‘Spot’, because we are interested in whatever can create interest to our users like landscapes, coastlines, mountain ranges, buildings or bridges, religious events cultural events, festivals, carnivals or once in a life time events such as volcano eruptions or lunar eclipses; in conclusion all the Spots where it is possible to take remarkable shots.
Our target is not to duplicate or recreate any of the existing social networks or mobile applications, but is to produce a tool that will allow and promote different level of information sharing, by using web or mobile on the Spot.
PhotoSpotLand™ allows photographers to plan in advance and with efficiency the best Spot with the best position, at the best time, with the right gears with advice from those who have shot there before.
Using PhotoSpotLand™ before leaving home you can find out if any other photographer is visiting the spot at the same time as you, and how he is organizing is trip.
And when on the spot can discover who already are around, sharing advice, gears, backup problems (battery fault, a miss tripod or flash etc). Receive immediate updates about parking spaces, wind, if there is any dangerous situations etc….by using the map you can visualize all the nearest photographers, find out which photographic equipment they have, and brand and model of the gear they use as who is available to give advice. The app will also allow the photographer to send messages to each other, so if while you are on the spot and encounter a technical problems (like a battery failure), or need a different tool for your camera you can find if anyone in the vicinity is able to help. Or only the experience to shoot together...You also may ask a close by and more experienced photographer how to take the best shot.
And if there are nearest blind photographers offer to advice and guide.
So PhotoSpotLand™ solves practical problems of anyone who share the passion for photography giving them the chance to plan, to shared experience and meet others with the same passion, having fun and saving money. On a timeline base we also connecting photographers with people who've taken photos of that spot before!
We want to change the way people shoot photos. We will help on users journey to focus on users calling as a photographer, as she can only focus and capture the souls of her photographs...Alone or on a shared experience.
With a special project, we also want to help blind photographers, we are sure that blind and 'normal' photographers can transmit and exchange one each other enthusiasm, new vision, and experience.
The market is so big, we adress potentially hundreds of millions users worldwide. Think how many PhotoSpotLand user we can catch just in famous Spots like Piazza di Spagna in Rome, Piccadilly Circus in London, Time Sq in NYC etc. hundreds of thousands a day, often creating micro-communities.
On the biz model side ur customers are big and medium players in the photo market industry and in tourist industry. We are customers broker, as every community born to. Collecting our users/photographers deep data and information, for each user We know: Users Photographic Gears, oldest, newest, lens,
software, hardware, smartphone, tablet etc. We also know annual spending ans gears wish list. And thanks to our timeline we know travel begaviour and plans.
The Beta will ready mid of December.
The team include experts in marketing, communication, social media, photograohy, PR, design, professional journalist, DB management and in our advisory board we had expert in marketing and opinion research, usability, famous photographers etc.
Our competitors are fragmented and/or not focused, mainly dediated to sharing photos or location without a clear focus point, we are a step above, we help their users.
We plan to establish the company headquarter in NYC.
NOTE: we have clear idea and plans on how to attract mass market audiences and how to get them to use the app/service on a regular enough basis. BUT due to public aspect of this form we can't share, we will more than happy to provide this information to judges on privat ebase thanks.
Team
FOUNDERS:
Mario Bucolo, CEO (full time)
Serial entrepreneur.
International marketing, communication and social media expert.
Awards winning professional photographer.
Publisher of Museumland.net the Worldwide Portal to Museums & Cultural Heritage.
Guest author of the Philip and Neil Kotler book “Museum marketing & strategy” 2nd edition, with an essay on museums and e-communication.
Mark Fabiani, Strategic, PR legal and communications counsel
Mark Fabiani's, La Jolla-based has since 1997 provided strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex financial, communications, government affairs and legal challenges. In 2000, Fabiani served as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Communications and Strategy for former Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign, in the closest presidential election in modern history. From 1994 through 1996 Fabiani was Special Counsel to President Bill Clinton and provided legal, communications and political counsel to the President and First Lady of the United States. Fabiani also served for four years as Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles and Chief of Staff to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Fabiani, who graduated Cum Laude from Harvard Law School in 1982, has also served in senior positions at the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Luca Marturana, CTO (full time)
23 years old, Master degree (cum laude) on Computer Engineering (5 years course). Skilled on Objective-C (good), C++ (good), Python (good), Erlang (Basic), Ruby, Debian, Ubuntu, Mac OS X, iOS, Gentoo, Java, SQL, Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, MongoDB, AMQP, LaTeX, RabbitMQ, BerkeleyDB. He also develop on iOS and he love photography and this is a plus because he know phtographers need.
Mirko Santangelo, CDO (Chief Designer Officer, Full time)
Awards winning professional visual designer. In 2010 won the Adobe YouGC contest – Category White Papers, and was included by Siryus Cybernetic Corporation on the Top 16 – Best Italian Digital Designer. He cooperates with international magazine as PSDTuts+ e Advanced Photoshop.
Paolo Zellner, CFO (full time)
A lifetime Banker he decided to change front and become a workflow and process optimization consultant.
---Advisory board (NO FOUNDERS)
Fabio Tracuzzi, Chief of the Press
Chair of the international press for Sicilian Region and Taormina Arte. He create a network of international journalist.
Nicola Piepoli, Marketing and opinion research
Piepoli is the founder of Istituto Cirm and recently of Istituto Piepoli.
He is the "father" of modern marketing research at European level and an international recognized researcher.
Consuelo Battistelli, usability and accessibility
Consultant for accessibility business development in Public Sector for some multinationals in the software industry. She's blind!
Pino Nobile, R&D Blind Photographers area
Director of Stamperia Regionale Braille, has twenty-five years experience in the study of needs and solutions for the visually impaired people.
XXX (privacy concern), Blind Childrens project
A National Geographic photographer. He is on the Top 10 worldwide photographers list.
Business model
We will operate in a large market, both on users side (hundreds of millions worldwide) and on our customers, around 100 big players spending normally more than 2 bln$ yearly in traditional advertising (press, billboard etc) and hundresd of thousands small and medium player worldwide.
And actually we are the only one can provide high detailed users data.
We are customers broker, as every community born to. Collecting our users/photographers deep data and information, we will offer a 'DNA' like profile, 'pure gold' for marketing departments and advertisers that can't have otherwise deep targeted data. We know our users gear (and how old are the gears), wish list, travel itinerary, history and plan, and how much they spend yearly.
We talk with our customers about their need to know in deep users behavior that they can't acquire by a traditional newspaper/magazine adv.
Our customers are players in the photo market like Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, Pentax, Olympus, Leica, Panasonic. Lens producers like Sigma and Tamron or Manfrotto/Gizmo for tripod etc. But also big or local retailer such B&H and Adorama (they advertise in every photo magazine in US with 8/10 pages each month).
We also deal on ENTERPRISE market, if a company (architecture firm, travel magazine etc) need a photo in a spot, it can launch a job and if there is any photographer check-in nearest he can accept the job and going to shhot upon assignment.
Our company goal is to create large network of engaged users, differentiated through user experience, and defensible through network effects.
We forecast an Ebitda of 4,8mln$ in 36 months.
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On users side we target every one love shooting photos, from enthusiast to amateur to pro. The have common needs:
A) Where to shoot great pictures
B) How to shoot great pictures
C) Shoot great pictures.
NOTE: we have clear idea and plans on how to attract mass market audiences and how to get them to use the app/service on a regular enough basis. BUT due to public aspect of this form we can't share, we will more than happy to provide this information to judges on privat ebase thanks.
Competitive advantage
We are a step above our competitors, they are fragmented and/or not focused, mainly dediated to sharing photos or location without a clear focus point: Flickr, Panoramio, Sonar, Foursquare, Pro Photo Spots, Gogobot, Wipolo etc are single purpose instead of a set of tools available as on our platform PhotoSpotLand™. Our competitive advantage is to provide existing and new services/tool in a focused, integrated, web-mobile platform. PhotoSpotLand™ allow photographers to find a one stop shop for all things related to their passion. For photographic market players, data sourced from PhotoSpotLand™ will be a relevant tool to better focus on users needs.
We operate at horizontal level above the competitors level, exploiting the 'shoot beautiful photos' goal of all the users are actually overwhelmed from the passion to shoot pictures and sharing them.
We are a step above, we learn users on how to shoot great photos in great places.
We also have a strong and high qualified team and a dream advisory board.
Mario Bucolo
