Vision

The Founder Institute

Prepared by Ziv Gillat

http://About.Me/ZivGillat

Twitter: @gillat

What am I passionate about?

• photography in general, but specifically:

– making people look their best, especially:

• women. But:

– I'll shoot men as well, sometimes :-)

• love to capture moments in time

• love to be a "fly on the wall", and see and share moments of

those that I'm photographing

• BUT, extremely passionate about having people share their

images and videos with their loved ones, with their high

quality cameras, not just their camera phones

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Some fun examples

Eye-Fi -- a tiny revolution

11

memory card

with built-in Wi-Fi

make your camera wireless

connecting a complex ecosystem

12

gadget?

system.

Eye-Fi -- the system

into the system from the moment of capture

wirelessly through home, hotspot, mobile networks

13

to all the devices and places for sharing and saving

enhanced with cloud-based services

Eye-Fi – today…

• From 4 founders to 45 full time employees + many that are

outsourced (manufacturing, support, operations, distribution)

• Raised 4 rounds, in excess of $50MM, ~ every 18 months (most

common)

• Sell in all major retail in the US, Europe (via Sandisk), Japan,

Canada and now A/NZ

• Multiple revenue streams, from cards & services

• 300MM photos & videos uploaded last year (~1MM per day)

• 85% across top 10 camera OEM’s – Eye-Fi Connected

• 2.5X sales YoY

What is your vision?

• My vision is Eye-Fi's vision. I couldn’t imagine

it any other way:

– help consumers share & organize their photos and videos, effortlessly.

• photos have a lifespan, and if they're not shared quickly, they become stale. This is bad for families, as well as for business.

– stale images don't get monetized, printed, shared, and could get lost easily

How do you translate your passion and vision into a business idea?

• 4 of us started to meet in mid 2005, to discuss

the issues with the photo imaging industry:

– cameras are fun to use

– getting images out of them is a chore. It's not rocket science, but people end up putting it off, like any other chore.

– connecting cameras is key. Camera phones are connected but have poor quality. Cameras are unconnected, but have great quality.

How do you translate your passion and vision into a business idea?

• the business evolved. We started with a totally

different idea, but the VC's didn't believe that 4

technical guys could pull it off, business-wise.

– we pivoted, and went to idea # 2 -- the Eye-Fi Card. Formed the company with the name Eye-Fi, but didn't think that we'll do Wi-Fi, until much later :-)

• Started by thinking that we'll only sell cards.

How do you translate your passion and vision into a business idea?

• didn't know that:

– we will get into services

– rev share with printing sites

– geolocation

– open hotspots

– archiving and backups, storage

– charging OEM's, to put our software inside their cameras. We're tiny & they're HUGE. Even today.

– smart phones will play such a key role in our future strategy, i.e. Eye-Fi Direct, KDDI, Docomo cloud services

Quick timeline

• mid 2005 starting discussing the problem

• 1/1/06 started full time, and raised our first angel

• 4/1/06 “alpha” – the card uploaded the first photo over TCP/IP

• 9/1/06 paid “beta”

• 2006 raised $1MM from angels, about once a month

• Q107 closed A

• Q407 launched into online retail (Amazon, etc…)

• Q208 launched brick & mortar retail

• Closed B X2 Eye-Fi Connected closed C closed Sandisk

Japan, Europe, Canada Eye-Fi Direct, Eye-Fi View Premium closed D

announced KDDI & Docomo (#1 & #2 carriers in Japan) stay tuned

How do you brainstorm ideas?

• insanely strong technical co-founders, very unique in

breadth.

• Sometimes, very passionate / argumentative, but

never lose the respect and friendship. Never

• put our ideas down on slides, debate, debate, and

debate some more

• then, we test them with consumers, or existing

customers

What are the tools for evaluating your ideas?

• test them around eStaff and employees

• www.researchnow.com

• www.usertesting.com

• www.SurveyMonkey.com

• www.MailChimp.com

What are the makings of a good idea versus a bad idea?

• Will people love it?

• Could it change or disrupt how they do

things?

–be careful from being too disruptive. Technology is already hard to market. Being truly disruptive will take longer to market.

–many ideas can be good, but are just "solutions looking for problems"

What are the makings of a good idea versus a bad idea?

• sometimes, you may be passionate about an idea,

but you're the only one that thinks it's a good idea.

TEST.

– Trust your friends, and ask them for their opinion

– don't worry about copying. No one is going to copy your idea, and if they are, either it's too easy to produce and you have no competitive advantage, or

– you now have validation that someone else takes your idea seriously enough to attempt it as well (this is rare, especially at your stage)

Should you pursue multiple ideas at once, and when should you focus on one?

• no. You can't afford to work on more than 1

idea. Your size is your best weapon

• The fact that you're tiny, and can change on a

dime, is also a powerful weapon, against the

conglomerates. Have a LASER focus. It's the

only way you will stand a chance to win.

But, some parting words

• Don’t start with an exit strategy. Build a business,

and keep building.

• Being a founder essentially means that you have a

disease. It’s the toughest thing that you will go

through, but you’ll keep coming back for more.

• Make sure that you plan for 7 years of fun. Imagine

that now. Can you envision pursuing your idea, even

when it gets tough, for 7 years?

THE END

THANK YOU

About.Me/ZivGillat