Websites are essential for businesses and entrepreneurs in pretty much every industry. For photographers in particular, it’s important to have sites that show off their photos in the best light possible.
But building those websites doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, Siftr specializes in making websites for photographers automatically. Read more about Siftr and its offerings in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What Siftr Does
Creates websites for photographers using image recognition engines.
Romil Mittal, co-founder of Siftr Labs told Small Business Trends, “Our platform automatically generates photo websites for photographers based on their Instagram, Flickr and Facebook photos.”
Business Niche
Creating websites within 10 minutes.
Mittal explains, “We use the most cutting edge artificial intelligence technology to analyze the photos. It helps us in finding the best photos and also to categorize them in meaningful galleries.”
How the Business Got Started
Because of the pain of website creation.
The company got started in November 2015 and was founded by two Adobe employees, Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, who were very familiar with how difficult it was for people to set up their own websites. So they created the platform to solve that problem.
Biggest Win
Building a satisfied user base.
Mittal says, “We have more than 5000 photographers on board, who are using our product and are really happy with it.”
Biggest Risk
Going against user feedback.
Mittal explains, “Instead of focusing on the showcase side of websites (i.e providing more themes and layouts), we decided to put our energy more into the analysis of photos — against what customers were earlier asking for. That risk however worked for us, and our users are very happy with the analysis that we do for their photos, as it helps them in creating much better websites.”
How Siftr Would Spend an Extra $100,000
Marketing and improving the product.
Favorite Team Activity
Spontaneous road trips.
Mittal says, “While leaving the office one evening (at around 8 p.m.), we casually discussed how fun would it be to go to Agra (a popular tourist destination 200 miles away) some day. Interestingly, after 10 minutes, we all were in the car heading towards Agra.”
* * * * *
Find out more about the Small Biz Spotlight program
Images: Siftr
Aira Bongco
I don’t know if it is okay to just don’t go with user feedback. While you certainly cannot please everyone, it is a must to listen to your customers.
Annie Pilon
I think in most cases that’s right – but it worked out in this situation at least!