Interview: Thomas Beguin, co-founder, ReSnap
The Dead Pixels Society recently interviewed (via email) Thomas Beguin, co-founder of ReSnap, a Dutch photo-book technology company. The company was in the news recently for acquiring Bundle, a company that developed intelligent photo-organization technology.
Can you tell us about ReSnap – a little about how the company has started and grown?
Beguin: ReSnap started in 2013 out of the frustration from the founders about how difficult it is to make a photo book. We believe, if you want to be successful in this space, you must help your users whenever you can. They basically have two problems. First of all to select their best photos out of the photo mess they have. Secondly, to make a nice looking design in an easy way. This is what we created.
First an AI image-selection technology that can select the best pictures for a photo book. We detect the emotional value of a photo for this. Secondly an automated book designer that generates the best design based on your photos. After we launched the first version of our AI a year a go, we grew very fast in the Benelux, United Kingdom, United States and Australia, through online advertisement and smart partnerships.
Who are the major users of ReSnap?
Beguin: Our customers are very widely ranged. We have more male customers than the traditional photo book companies. And besides young people trying out our service, we also have a lot of older people who are now finally able to make a photo book very easy, instead of spending 20 hours (on other apps).
What about Bundle makes this a good fit?
Beguin: Bundle created great apps to help people collect their photos together in smart albums. They missed a selection technology and a good editor for photo books. So by combining our strengths we will have the best easy photo book platform on every device. You can also start making a book in your app and finish it on your desktop for example.
How will Bundle be integrated into your services? Will the Bundle team be added to ReSnap?
Beguin: We will rebrand the apps and improve the user flow with our technology. The team fully cooperates during the integration phase, but afterwards we won’t add the Bundle team because we already have a great development team.
What benefits will customers see to the ReSnap/Bundle combination?
Beguin: They now have our selection technology and automated book creation available on every device. They can also edit their books of course, but what’s more interesting that they can start on their smartphone by creating a first-version photo book. If they want to edit and finish on a bigger screen, they can finish on their laptop.
How will the latest updates to Google Photos affect your business plan?
Beguin: This is a very interesting development for us, because a tech giant like Google acknowledges our vision. They also see there is a big market to win if you look at how you can help people to relive memories from the huge pile of photos they have. Still, we are the only company worldwide with an AI selection technology for photos and the only company that can create automated designs (not just one photo per page). So our product is more tailored to the demands of people who want a photo book. But like I said, we are happy Google acknowledges our way is the way to go to be successful in the photo book space.