Describe the business, core products and services in one paragraph.
WanderSnap is Asia’s Airbnb for photography. It connects travellers with local photographers to capture selfie-free adventure moments — anytime you need curated photos taken: on vacation, during off-the-beaten path adventure, conferences, maternity shoots, and much more, we got you at every angle.
Who are your key customers?
There are 2 types of customers: individuals and businesses. For individuals, WanderSnap is a one-stop-destination to book a reliable photographer, whatever the need might be, choosing by editing style, budget, availability and type of specialty. Business customers are mostly in tourism and hospitality and WanderSnap offers complete packages to fulfill their photographic needs for CRM or content creation.
Who are your key partners?
We partner with all types of hospitality properties across hotels, airlines, reward programs and OTAs – HK Express’s Reward U, ZuzuHotels, Klook, Thomas Cook, Airbnb Trips, etc.
What business are you most likely to be compared to?
There are a few similar businesses, mostly focused on other markets around the world, such as Flyotgrapher, Snappr, Canvera, OneThreeOneFour, and many others. WanderSnap’s unique difference is our exclusive focus on Asia and empowering low-opportunity youth to enter the workforce as photographers through our company’s training programs. We are also unique for our distribution strategy through cross-industry partners and travel OTAs.
What problem are you trying to solve for your customers?
For individual customers, we are capturing selfie-free candid moments of their travel, adventures, or special moments to help them preserve precious memories forever, while offering flexible pricing, quick turnaround time (5 edits within 24 hours), and consistent quality. Of the 3.4 billion photos taken daily, we seek to elevate their quality from mediocrity to curated excellence.
What problem are you trying to solve for your partners?
For our business partners, we offer a value added service that makes their offerings more compelling to the clients by way of acquiring new customers through photoshoot giveaways (powered by us), reactivating dormant users (by sharing to them captured snaps of them enjoying a great time at our partner’s service). For example, Reward U program allows customers to earn and redeem their loyalty points for WanderSnap shoots. As a regional service provider, we can assure that photos are captured and sent back in a timely fashion, with billing and after-sales support.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
Bootstrapped for the last 6 months.
Who validated the idea first – investors or customers?
Customers have validated the idea, as WanderSnap is on the path to complete 100th booking this month – including events like a surprise proposal, Mother’s Day gifts, weddings, 100th day birthdays and other special moments.
What is the revenue model and strategy for profitability?
WanderSnap takes a commission from every booking for individual guests, and offers complete packages for businesses. As a marketplace that connects photographers with customers, our profitability is achievable at scale. Our goal is to build up more strategic partnerships that help build out distribution and demand for the services.
What is the market opportunity? How scalable is this business?
We believe the market opportunity is massive, with 277M inbound travellers in Asia, and a rise of importance of quality social media for personal and commercial consumption. With 1% of these travellers using a professional photographer twice a year, it’s a $1.1B business in Asia alone (not including businesses who demand services).
One of WanderSnap’s campaigns involving photographing people in a physical Instagram frame
Competitive analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Strength:
– Small, agile team with a lot of experience in the business (20+ years building brands like 500px, lululemon, TOMS, Alipay etc.)
– Flexible, photographer-friendly pricing made great for impulsive purchases among travellers
– Ability to execute partnerships to improve market share
Weakness
– Need to raise funds in order to expand business, hire people, increase marketing
– It’s a new business segment that requires additional education for both traveller and snapper segments
Opportunity
– A chance to ride the wave of sharing-economy press mentions, and increasing awareness of the business over time
– Through Wandersnap’s education programme,, we gain ability to reduce marketing and recruiting costs. We also gain loyal, and less expensive photographers, helping lead the market
– Establishing the base in a lower-cost environment is an opportunity to leapfrog competition, while spending much less
– Most of our competitors are in a similar stage (seed) to Wandersnap, so we can innovate faster and avoid the need to fight an established player
– Distribution through travel ecosystem rather than than acquire travel alone
Threat
– A new market segment may prove to be shallower than expected
– Change in technology, like new tools, i.e. selfie drones, may eat a bit of the market, depending on the price points
– Operational issues in working with many countries and different cultures, might prove to be a big obstacle to solve
– Not enough growth in bookings to support rise in overhead as the marketplace expands
The WanderSnap crew
Who are the team members and advisors?
Jen Loong — founder, CEO (previously Groupon, Alipay, Lululemon, TOMS); Lee Emmert — CTO (previously Evaluāt founder);
Ev Tchebotarev — COO (previously 500px founder)
Why do you think you are the best people to make this vision happen?
We have assembled a great team, from technical talent, to amazing community organizers. With the current skill set, we are able to execute on the current roadmap, and have experience to make proper technical hires that help us build future-proof product, which will help our customers book photographers as effortlessly as they book a hotel or an uber ride.
What’s the motivation behind doing this?
We believe people deserve better photos. We believe that best memories are made during special moments, such as vacations, adventures, birthdays, baby showers, and many more, and believe that the best ways to preserve those memories forever is to capture candid, beautiful photos that will last a lifetime. We want everyone to have the opportunity to effortlessly and inexpensively book a photographer for those special moments. You best life moments deserve the best memories.
As frequent travellers ourselves, we see the opportunity for more engaging, higher paying and more dignified jobs for youth working in tourist-ridden Asian destinations. Merging the needs of travellers with local snappers create a sustainable social impact model that promotes creativity not as a luxury but an option for low-opportunity youth around the region. Look good, do good.
