Before Jean-Christophe co-founded Pictawall he was working at a communication agency, but because of the routine job he decided to quit. He wanted to work on something more innovative and high-tech. He attended an event called “Start-up weekends”. And with some friends he came up with the idea of Pictawall, also because it wasn’t that hard to produce a prototype. Something they made for fun became a success. At the end of the weekend they already had customers. After they discovered that there was a market for this product they decided to go for it.

They didn’t have any investors at the beginning because they wanted to stay lean, so they bootstrapped the whole operation. The thing they invested the most at the beginning of their adventure was time. They participate to a contest and earned some prize money.  That didn’t really help them financially but it did give them some incentive and validation.

As Jean-Christophe and his colleagues were looking for a catchy name for the company they combined 2 words that describes their first products. Pictawall, a combination of picture (the pictures that visitors take) and wall (the screen where the pictures are displayed).

Most of their competitors are located in the United States so Pictawall has the advantage of being closer the market, the European market.

Pictawall first got approached by Iminds and also by ABE and other organizations in Brussels. They also got help from an organization called Raison Entrepreneur. And Lastly, they participated in several events from Startup.be,

Now that they are using a subscription model they do notice some changes. The price was a lot higher at first when they were still using the pay per event model. So their margins are lower now. They also had to rebuild their sales strategy because they were selling subscriptions. People were also more inclined to buy per event instead of a subscription model. The reason for this is that they would consider it as a service when using it per event instead of a product when paying a monthly subscription fee.

The advantage of this model is that it guarantees monthly revenue when signing a client and by having this consistency with your revenue you’re able to make investments with less risks.

Brand recognition happened quite fast for Pictawall. This is thanks to al the organization and structures that are in place today. These organizations have a lot of connections in the media. According to Jean-Christophe Pictawall were known in their sector after only 6 months. Another reason for their rapid brand recognition is the design of their logo and the way they handled their customers.

Pictawall haven’t used a lot of methods to promote their brand. They promoted their brand by cold calling, participating to (marketing) events but mostly through word-of-mouth advertising.

Customers

The segments they are currently targeting are travel agencies and the fashion/clothing industry.

Competitors

When they first started they only had about 10 competitors and now there are around a hundred similar companies in the world. Most of those companies deliver a cheap low-quality product with no service. Most of their competitors are located in the USA.

In Belgium there are 2 main competitors One of them is Tweetwall Pro, a company that has been around 5 years longer but mainly focus on other areas of the market. Another is a cheaper alternative to Pictwall. But the large direct competitors are Olapic and Stackla. But those companies are more focused on the US and UK market.

Because they arrived in the market ate a time where only 10 similar companies in the world had launched there wasn’t a lot of copying. The reason behind this is that there wasn’t really a market leader and most companies were just developing on their own. But later after new companies arrived on the scene they noticed a lot of companies used the same concepts as they did. That didn’t necessarily mean that they were being copied but more and more companies were selling a similar product. The sector was growing.

There is one case when Pictawall were only 3 months old and another company in their city was founded called Picsawall. But they didn’t have any success and it’s not sure whether they still exist.

Conclusion

At the moment it’s very clear what the main threats are. They are mostly using social media like Facebook, Instagram,etc. with their product. So if one of those social media shuts down their operations it would have catastrophic consequences for Pictawall and thousands of other companies because their business model depends on social media. Another threat is that social media implement features on their platform that would make Pictawall unnecessary. But the advantage Pictawall has with this threat is that they are offering several social media platforms within their product.

One of the big opportunities Pictawall has compared to the competition is that they are not funded. Which means they are independent and don’t have to listen to investors, they are totally free to do what they want. Their small team also helps them to change direction quickly and adapt to certain situations faster.

The first tip for young entrepreneurs Jean-Christophe shared with us was :

“At the end you die. In your life, at the end you die. Nothing happens after. You can be famous but you still die. So it’s important to whatever you want in your life.”

It’s because of his first ‘boring’ job in a communication agency that Jean-Christophe realized that life is short and it’s import to do something you like. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard. But your hard work should be about something you care.

Secondly don’t lose time with people who don’t understand what you’re doing. Sometimes you have to be cold, not mean but cold. When a certain relationship with an employee is not working you need to cut him/her as fast as possible. Otherwise it’s a waste of your time and their time. Jean-Christophe advises starting entrepreneurs to fire someone as early as possible so that it’s easier the next time. This doesn’t mean you have to be cold all the time. When working with your colleagues it’s important to be warm and radiate positive energy. But those colleagues also need to bring something to the table. They need to be challenging.

Another tip is to focus on one thing at the time. If you spread your time and focus over several little projects it is more likely that you will fail. Pick the thing that you believe in the most and focus 100% on that!

There were some obstacles that Jean-Christophe had to overcome in his first year. Believing in yourself, believing in your product and have the consumer believe in your product. Finding the right teammates. It is a team and everyone has to be onboard, but sometimes finding the right partners can be harder in work then in life.

In couple of years Pictawall would like to be acquired by a large media group or another company.

Posted on 8/04/2016