photostre.am is a portfolio service for photographers using flickr. recently i had the opportunity to interview the creator of photostre.am, thomas r. koll.every photographer wanting to present her photo work without using technical skills while remaining on flickr at the same time is in the target audience. no double uploading necessary.
photostre.am is jumping right into a crowded market. competing with hosting one´s own website, using widely available templates, specialised services for photographers or with services form fluidr, viewbook, pullfolio, deviantart or alternative approaches like flickroom, using adobe air.
at the barcamp 2010 in vienna, i had the opportunity to sit together with thomas for a founders interview about his motivations behind the project. (photo by thomas r. koll, view his photostre.am here)
start.up: thomas, what´s motivating you to work on photostre.am?thomas: to learn, that´s my top motivation. and the pleasure to interact with users of photostre.am.
start.up: what are the most difficult things working on photostre.am?
thomas: photostre.am is taking a lot of time and therefore competing with the "bread" jobs i have to do in order to make a living. being a one-man show, it is furthermore tricky to cover areas like interface design, which is an art by itself. finally to prioritize features is always a challenge.
start.up: how will you make money with your service?
thomas: through pro accounts and a white label b2b service. pro accounts will cost between 10 to 300 euros, depending on the features. compared with creating one´s own portfolio websites, that is rather valuable.
start.up: what would you recommend new startups, considering that you are already work on this project for around one and a half year?
thomas: first, make your to-do lists and prioritize in order to focus. secondly, choose your "bread" jobs - which finance your startup project - based on how much money you can earn on them.
start.up: finally, what´s the technical background, behind photostre.am?
thomas: i am using rails3, mongo db - which has nice horizontal scaling, two virtual servers - one for the app, one for the database and rackspace cloud.
start.up: thomas, thank you for the interview.
