Pixmac Founder Interview

Founded in September 2008, Pixmac is a fast-growing microstock site with a database of more than 10 million photos available for sale. The small team is based in Prague led by founder Vita Valka, a designer turned tech entrepreneur. Besides their flagship site, Pixmac also recently launched a stock photo site for people as well as vector illustrations. I had the chance to ask Vita a few questions about running his company…

Why did you start Pixmac?
There was a huge opportunity in the market. Traditional stock photos were declining, microstock was a rising star. I’m a designer and I was using sites like Pixmac for years. That was a great challenge for me.

Can you give me a brief overview of where the firm is today?
Pixmac is one of the Top 10 agencies in microstock worldwide. We have the best technology inside and we still refine it again and again to become more than perfect. We do care about localisation and usability. That’s our focus since beginning, because it really matters.

What makes pixmac different than other stock photo sites?
We’re the fastest. We’ve been the first to introduce OneStop purchase without registration. We’re the only agency that has more micro sources on one site and we’re preset in over 17 countries around the world. We have a great and responsive customer support because that’s a part of the success.

What is the most downloaded photo on the site?
This one: http://www.pixmac.com/picture/people+sport/000000002826

And here are more: http://www.pixmac.com/best-sellers/yesterday

Where do your customers come from?
From over 60+ countries. Most often from North America and Europe. As we’re from Europe it was a success for us to launch Korean and Chinese version of the site lately.

What are two or three key things you have learned?
Customers give you so much feedback that without it, we wouldn’t be so succesful and complete as we are. Pixmac is constantly changing and we’re working every day to have it loading faster, easier to use and to offer almost any digital picture on the planet that can be purchased on one site.

I’ve learned that being open and innovative can become live’s vision. And I’ve learned that great team is something that really makes a big difference between trying and achieving. Talking to Japan in the morning, Moscow at lunch and finishing dinner while on a call with Canada is the most motivating thing for me. It’s been and it still is one of the greatest lessons of my life.

I wish you all luck in your business. And if you need help, just ask Vita

Site of the Month: Note & Point

Note & Point is a simple idea — a collection of well-designed presentations submitted by users. The gallery-style site follows the same principle of the dime-a-dozen CSS galleries but instead of showcasing websites, the site exclusively focuses on Powerpoint and PDF presentations.

Hopefully, this will inspire some of the cookie-cutter slide decks we see too often in the business world.

Aside from aesthetics, I was surprisingly pleased to find a lot of the presentations with quality content. Hmm, there could be unlocked potential here…

Spain Goes Groupon Crazy: 12 Sites To Find Daily Deals

I’m not much of a coupon guy nor have I tried Groupon yet. But the group-buying craze has entered Spain with a vengeance and it’s hard not to pay attention. It seems like every other month there is a new site that pops up but the game is still wide open and still too early to declare a clear winner.

For us consumers it could be considered good news because there are plenty of opportunities to find a deal if you know where to look. The compiled list below are 10 worthy sites that offer quality deals for major cities in Spain. Do you know of any other sites that offer deals in Spain? Add them in the comments!

1.) Groupon (CityDeal)

2.) Groupalia

3.) BuyTheFace

4.) Reduti

5.) Colectivia

6.) Offerum

7.) Ofertius

8.) LetsBonus

9.) Cuponing

10.) Groupola

11.) Amitad

12.) CholloCity

The Power of Online Communities for Consumer Brands

Online communities are increasing becoming a powerful source of word-of-mouth marketing and building long-lasting awareness for consumer brands. The following questions were posed to Maria Sipka, an expert on the subject and CEO/Founder of Linqia - a startup connecting brands, agencies and consumers.

Q: Why should brands engage online communities as part of their marketing efforts?
The simple answer is to get closer to their customers. Close to 1 billion people are engaging in online communities globally and spending a considerable amount of time connecting, sharing, discussing and learning. Mark Zukerberg recently said that “Communities already exist. Think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do”.

Q: What types of approaches do you think work best?
The first approach is to understand clearly what the objectives the brand wants to achieve. Does the brand want to create awareness around a new product? Conduct market research? Increase their sales? The second step is to identify where the people they are interested in reaching are hanging out. At this stage, identifying 5 – 10 communities is sufficient to gain an understanding of what is being discussed, what could be relevant and potential needs of that community. It’s key to determine the level of engagement and validating the community is active and potentially receptive to brands engaging with the members. Narrow the list to 3-5 communities and reach out to the community leaders to schedule a discussion around how the brand could engage with the community. Community leaders know their communities best and can offer the brand deeply insightful guidance on what could work and what hasn’t worked in the past.

Q: How can success be measured?
Initial success is uncovering the vast array of communities that exist and potentially relevant to the brand. Gauging the receptiveness of the community leader will determine what can be achieved including how many members would respond to a survey, view a video, download a report, register for an event and even purchase a product. The key to success is very dependent on how engaged that community is.

More on this topic in Maria’s presentation below:

Tesla goes IPO: Hype or Home run?

Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer and maker of the $109,000 Roadster, entered the NASDAQ yesterday surpassing expectations and closing 40% up at $24 (from $17) during first day of trade while the Dow plummeted 230 points. Not a bad start.

At the same time, there’s been a lot of hype around this IPO mainly because it’s the first American car manufacturer to go public since Ford (1956) and because Tesla has become a poster child of the clean tech sector, bringing hope and promise to other green companies. But many claim that this is all just hype and merely false promises for the industry.

On the surface, it may be a great company and they are, undoubtedly, doing something very positive for the automotive industry (and ultimately the environment) but there are some major beefs and concerns about the company that undermines their current $2.2 billion valuation.

Here are a few:

- Massive debt: Doing big things takes big risks and lots of money, understandable. But this company owes half a billion dollars (yes, that’s $500M) in debt. Even CEO Elon Musk was allegedly broke, according to recent divorce court filings, and has been borrowing money from friends. Borrowing money seems to be something these guys know way to well.

- Far from profitable: Ok — points for honesty here but the fact that they are running at a significant loss and hemhoraging money should be a bit unnerving for an investor. This is from their S1 filing… ‘We have a history of losses and we expect significant increases in our costs and expenses to result in continuing losses for at least the foreseeable future. ‘

- Made for the few: The Roadster and Model S sedan (coming up) serve a very, very small niche and simply don’t have the power to reach the masses. Not only because they are expensive but also because it requires a drastic change in consumer behavior –- a 4 hour waiting charging session after every 200 miles.

- No significant competitive advantage: Marketing and celebrity publicity can help you make some noise but what happens when the novelty wears off and the big boys start producing similar products at significantly lower price points?

The concept of electric vehicles is nothing new but this is the first time we are seeing something with sex appeal driven by the likes of Brad Pitt and George Clooney. I give Tesla a  lot of credit for making something that has been historically unappealing into something innovative and very “cool” and shaking things up a bit in the automotive sector. I’m just not sure i’ll be buying any shares of TSLA anytime soon.

Incredible World Cup Visual by Marca.com

The folks at Marca.com have broke down the World Cup tournament into giant interactive calendar that makes it easy to follow all the teams, game schedules, cities/stadiums and groups in the tournament. A simple rollover of the mouse changes the displayed calendar info and the visual can be viewed full screen.

This is definitely my go-to guide for the next couple weeks. Simple idea, fantastic execution. Muy bien hecho.

Site of the Month: IsItSunshine.com

IsItSunshine is a clever weather mashup that shows local weather conditions and answers a very simple (ungrammatically correct) question: is it sunshine? The site makes use of Google Maps with an overlay of large visual and very cheerful icons. No fuss, no feature overload. Just a simple idea providing useful information and executed really, really well.

A few other weather mashups already exist but here’s what I especially like about this site:

• Scrollable time line of upcoming 7-day forecast
• Filters for temperature, wind, cloudiness, precipitation etc.
• Loads fast

There’s very little information about the site but it appears to have been created by a Swedish developer, Magnus Ottosson. Hey, Magnus… how about a mobile app?

3 Promising Startups Emerge from Startup 2.0

Another edition of the Startup 2.0 event (part of the Nonick conference) wrapped up in Bilbao a few days ago and three startups proved to be more worthy than others.

The winners, from top to bottom, include:

Paris-based SubMate is a “social commuting” site that helps people discover and meet people with similar interests that share the same commute on the subway. The site is currently available for Paris, London and New York. I give it a year before it morphs into a dating site…

Minube is a spanish social travel network (aren’t there already a lot of these?). With Minube, users can plan their trips, compare flights and hotels and share travel experiences.

Another Spanish-based startup, Askaro, is an information exchange site that lets users ask and answer questions related to specific geographic areas (cities, neighborhoods, etc.). I’d love to see a mobile app for this — could be extremely handy.

Hey Gary Vaynerchuk, It’s Just Not That Easy

I like Gary Vaynerchuk and give the guy a ton of credit. He’s full of energy, very passionate and good at inspiring people to get off their ass and do something. But (and a BIG but) I have to be critical because what he preaches is seldom reality for most people and usually just doesn’t work.

His story is something like this: 1) Follow your passion 2) Build a business around it 3) Cash in. To this, he adds stuff like “look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself ‘what do I want to do every day for the rest of my life?’… do that. I promise you can monetize that shit” Well, guess what? That shit doesn’t usually work.

I completely support the notion of following your passion (in anything you do in life). But building a business around it and, more importantly, trying to cash in is not realistic for 99.9% of people out there. Nor will it bring more happiness. In fact, it will probably bring you more stress and leave you cash strapped compared to your cushy corporate job.

The reality is this: sure, you can start a blog on Alf if you are passionate about Alf. You might even get some decent traffic, but after the initial excitement of creating something new wears off, you’ll be busting your ass for a project that you can barely monetize to help cover your bills.

The funny thing is that most people think entrepreneurs are happier than “normal” employees that are working for companies because they live an autonomous life and control their own destiny. Bullshit. The majority of entreprenuers have taken the entrepreneurial route and are where they are because they are psychofrenic misfits and just don’t fit in a corporate structure.

Of course, what the general public sees is the 0.1% success cases, including Gary,  that have made it and hit the proverbial “home run”. I’m not saying it’s impossible nor do I want to hate on anyone’s dreams of trying to pursue an entrepreneurial venture. But there is a hard dose of reality missing from Gary’s presentations that seem to undermine  what it really takes to run a successful business (awesome team + great product/service + the right market conditions, etc.) and the many risks associated with taking the plunge to follow your passion.

But at the end I guess telling people to crush it and cash in on your passion is more easily packaged and sold than actually done.

What is an API and Why You Might Need One

There is a lot of buzz and innovation stemming from the rise of APIs these days so I wanted to dig in deeper to learn more.  The following is a guest post by Steven Willmot, an expert in the API arena and CEO of 3scale - a company that provides API management services.

I asked Steven if he could shed some light on what is an API and why you might need one. Here’s what he had to say…

Today’s web is 95% about web pages of one sort or another – content sites, ecommerce site or web apps which allow you to get things done. Running a great sight or service means getting people to your site and keeping them there (SEO ninjas wanted here!). However, what about this other 5%? It turns out there is another kind of web emerging which is pretty different – one which is driven by access to the raw data and services on the Web without
all the graphics and layout of a normal web page.

This way of delivering content and services is an API (Application Programming Interface) – basically it allows sites to allow others to access the raw form of what they do it and:

• reformat it any way they want.
• mix it up with their own or other content.
• deliver it into apps other than a browsers (including iPhone or Android mobile apps or desktop widgets).

There are now plenty of sites that do business almost 100% via their API and have no real “Web Pages” to speak off (except to explain how to use the API): Zemanta and Disqus are cool examples.

An API is basically impemented in the same way as a regular web site except that what comes out is in a different format. Many APIs also allow you to write back to the server – to buy a flight, upload a file etc. – all normal operations are possible. For example here is Mark Cuban using facebook’s new social graph API:

http://graph.facebook.com/markcuban

{
“id”: “6423393925″,
“name”: “Mark Cuban”,
“picture”: “http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/object2/334/121/s6423393925_2839.jpg”,
“link”: “http://www.facebook.com/MarkCuban”,
“category”: “Public_figures_other”,
“username”: “MarkCuban”,
“location”: {
“street”: “2909 Taylor”,
“city”: “Dallas”,
“state”: “TX”,
“country”: “United States”,
“zip”: “75226″
},
“affiliation”: “HDNet”,
“birthday”: “00/00/0000″,
“personal_info”: “just a fun loving guy ”,
“personal_interests”: “nba,mma,rugby, ballroom dancing.. sometimes, movies, business”,
“fan_count”: 77938

}

If you had the authority you could get /friends /events etc. about Mark Cuban in exactly the same way. Why does Facebook do this? Because thousands of other sites can now integrate facebook data into their own systems – giving Facebook a massive presence across the web (more on Facebook’s APIs here: http://developers.facebook.com/).

But this isn’t just for the big guys – most sites could benefit from an API of their own – companies rolling them out are gaining a lot of strategical advantages:

• they can let partners integrate with them more deeply
• they can allow their users better access to their data
• they can launch widgets and apps for different devices all based on their standardised API
  format.

Essentially an API allows you to build up an ecosystem of partners around the web who send you back traffic, promote your brand or even drive sales directly. [plug - remove if you wish] – Companies like 3scale can make it easy to get started with APIs and begin doing this.

Finally you can also monetize an API either by allowing transactions to take place over that channel or charging for access by hits on the API, Megabytes uploaded or some other metric. This has the potential to create a business-to-business dimension for you site.

That 5% is growing fast – check out Programmable Web for a growing list of cool APIs!