{"id":4514,"date":"2012-07-25T11:09:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T09:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=4514"},"modified":"2012-07-25T11:09:19","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T09:09:19","slug":"sharypic-hackfwd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/07\/sharypic-hackfwd\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharypic – The HackFWD event photo sharing tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

I caught up with Sharypic\u00a0<\/a>co-founder Francois-Joseph “FJ” Grimault<\/a>\u00a0at one of the \u201cParis Incubateurs\u201d buildings to talk about his\u00a0event photo-sharing tool<\/p>\n

Their office – Paris Incubateurs<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
They swear the beer tap was a gift!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe official name of the building \u00a0is \u201cIncubateur de Paris R\u00e9gion Innovation Nord-Express\u201d, and it\u2019s one of six that the City of Paris owns and operates, and it is quite a journey to get to. It\u2019s a modern looking building, in a non-descript part of town. I\u2019ve been to quite a few incubators<\/a>, and I fully expected to see a busy and energetic open space plan \u2013 but no! A lounge with mailboxes all marked with well-known Paris startup names, and an elevator that leads to a deserted hallway with brightly colored doors. One of the doors leads to a 60 m2 space that Sharypic inhabits, completely isolated from the rest of the startups in the building. A curious way to do an incubator, but I\u2019m sure the government employees of the city of Paris have thought about it a lot. It is, however, a good deal for Sharypic, so why not have your startup in the 18th!
\n\"Sharypic\"<\/a>Sharypic was born at Startup Weekend Paris<\/a> \u2013 two of the founders pitched the idea together, and their third co-founder joined them there. During that same event, their only investor, HackFWD<\/a>, also made contact with them. So this is certainly a success story in terms of getting the most value out of a Startup Weekend! They only placed third in the Startup Weekend competition, and won a “mentoring partnership” with Orange (that went nowhere). But that\u2019s hardly the point \u2013 they had a viable team, and a viable idea. Because they are three developers, HackFWD was interested in them (a developer-ONLY team is one of their requirements, but more about that later).<\/p>\n

Sharypic is a photo sharing tool. Don\u2019t they already exist by the boatload, you say?<\/h2>\n

Sure \u2013 but Sharypic is focused on photo sharing around events<\/em>, and not necessarily with people you know. Imagine a wedding that you attended, and you\u2019d love to get photos taken by the other guests, even if you don\u2019t know the other guests \u2013 Sharypic lets you do that. In addition, they can do provide a realtime photo \u2018wall\u2019 at the event, based on photos that are tweeted, or shared using their (iOS only) mobile app, or sent to a special email address set up in advance. These events can be huge ones, like LeWeb, or they can be someone\u2019s birthday party. For small events, the service is free, but if you have more than 10 people that upload, or want to use the advanced features like the wall, the realtime page, the mail address, dropbox sync, etc, you\u00a0 pay between $21 and $300 per event. They will even come to your event and set up a wall for you! Obviously that costs more.
\nThe obvious downside to their product is that it\u2019s trying to be a niche in a market where the big players offer free solutions. Their response, to customize for their niche, is the correct one. Is it working? It seems like it\u2019s too soon to tell \u2013 they rolled out their premium offer a few months ago, and are still reiterating the product. Early feedback is good, and they are responding quickly to customer requests. So far so good<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But why did it take 1.5 years to get this far?<\/h2>\n

They got funded very big at the beginning \u2013 to the tune of \u20ac200K – that means that with a low burn rate (which they have), they can last for 2+ years. Does that make them lose the sense of urgency that other, less funded startups, have? I asked FJ, who pondered the question for a moment before thoughtfully answering that he doesn\u2019t know. He talks about how it took a lot of learning, validating, iterating, and building, to get where they are.
\nIt turns out FJ and I both know the CEO of BlaBlaCar<\/a>\u00a0(<\/a>Covoiturage<\/a>)\u00a0<\/a>\u2013 a well-known and successful French startup. The CEO, Fred Mazzella<\/a>, will tell anyone who will listen his story of how it took his startup 8(!!) years to get where they are \u2013 so that makes Sharypic look like a TGV! FJ does agree that it\u2019s high time they get traction with paying clients, which they are \u2013 they opened their Paypal account in May and it\u2019s been steadily filling up. Launching the iOS app also made a difference. In addition to their current funding, they\u2019re also pursuing Oseo <\/a>money \u2013 the well-known subsidy vehicle of the French state.<\/p>\n

About HackFWD<\/strong><\/h2>\n

HackFWD is a very special creature \u2013 an accelerator that ONLY invests in teams that are developer-only. This goes back to the philosophy of the founder, Lars Hinrichs<\/a>, who made his millions with German startup Xing \u2013 a social network for professionals that\u2019s very successful in certain parts of the world. While doing Xing, Lars got more and more impressed by developers, and their way of thinking.\u00a0 He\u2019s not a developer himself, but after his very successful \u00a0exit, he decided to start a pre-seed fund that focuses 100% on developers. At a recent event, he was quoted saying \u201cEasier to train a geek how to do business than a business guy how to code\u201d \u2013 which got tweeted into high heaven.
\nSo how well does his theory hold up when it comes to Sharypic? Clearly, because they are three developers, execution is not the problem \u2013 they have built (and rebuilt) quite a lot of product. But is the quote true? Did they easily learn the business stuff? FJ admits it\u2019s tough sometimes \u2013 he\u2019s taken home many business books on the weekends. He praises HackFWD and its sponsor network, who helped him a ton with business stuff, especially in the beginning. Now, 1.5 years later, he\u2019s much more comfortable in that area. But when they recently started marketing to the US business world, they got a US business guy to consult with them \u2013 so they recognized that they are weak in that area, and did the smart thing, which is to pay someone to do it for them! So this specific case mostly supports Lars\u2019 theory.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Sharypic is a startup that has made a slow start, but is now gaining traction with paying clients. Having a developer-only team is mostly a strength, but from time to time it\u2019s inconvenient and it may have slowed them down in the beginning. They\u2019re happy with their investor, HackFWD, who helped them a lot when they needed it the most. Is it the next Facebook? Maybe not. Fail Conference<\/a> organizer Cassie Phillipps<\/a> once said that \u201cMaking money around events is much harder than people think\u201d and it seems she\u2019s right \u2013 only the stubborn and patient entrepreneur gets it right. Is Sharypic one of those? Check on them a year from now and you\u2019ll know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I caught up with Sharypic\u00a0co-founder Francois-Joseph “FJ” Grimault\u00a0at one of the \u201cParis Incubateurs\u201d buildings to talk about his\u00a0event photo-sharing tool Their office – Paris Incubateurs The official name of the building \u00a0is \u201cIncubateur de Paris R\u00e9gion Innovation Nord-Express\u201d, and it\u2019s one of six that the City of Paris owns and operates, and it is quite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":64792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[3170,2558],"class_list":["post-4514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-failcon","tag-hackfwd"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}