Transcript: How Matterport Service Providers can make money with Snappr15168
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 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
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| Sponsored WGAN Post | [Free Text Reminder: Text Me 5 Minutes Before Air! --- 108-WGAN-TV: Introduction to Snappr for Matterport Service Providers with San Francisco-based Snappr Header of Operations and Founding Team Member Rafat Khan (@Snappr) | Thursday, 24 June 2021  Video: Snappr enterprise photography drives growth and is used by over 53% of the Fortune 500. | Video courtesy of the Snappr YouTube Channel | March 25, 2021 WGAN-TV: Introduction to Snappr for Matterport Service Providers Hi All, On WGAN-TV Live at 5 on Thursday, 24 June 2021, our topic is: ► Transcript: WGAN-TV How Matterport Service Providers – and Real Estate Photographers – Can Make Money with Snappr This WGAN-TV Live at 5 show is for you, if: ► You are a Matterport Service Provider that is seeking more business ► You are a Member of the Matterport Capture Services On-Demand Program (and seek similar gigs) ► You are a professional real estate photographer and seek more business (DSLR, Drone and/or Video) My guest was Snappr Head of Operations and Founding Team Member Rafat Khan (@Snappr). Rafat reached out to me recently for help finding Matterport Service Providers quickly because Snappr already has U.S. Matterport shoots waiting to be done as soon as Snappr can onboard Matterport Service Providers in the United States. Rafat let me know that his most immediate needs are: ► Matterport Service Providers in the top 100 US markets and the top 20 resort areas ► Matterport Service Providers elsewhere in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia ► Professional Real Estate Photographers (DSLR), Drone and/or Video In addition to asking Rafat more about these opportunities, I will ask him about: ► Snappr for real estate (Matterport, DSLR shot images) ► Snappr for Enterprise clients (53% of the Fortune 500 use Snappr) ► Snappr for Matterport Service Providers and Professional Real Estate Photographers I encourage you to complete the Snappr Photographer Interest Form. If you are a Member of the Matterport Capture Services On-Demand Program, it's a no-brainer to sign-up for the Snappr On-Demand MSP Program. While the On-Demand business model of Snappr versus Matterport are super-similar, with the Snappr On-Demand MSP Program: 1. In addition to doing Matterport scans, potential opportunities for DSLR shot real estate images, drone and video 2. Snappr offers clients the option (pricing) of Matterport shot tours with: - Matterport Pro 2 - Matterport Pro 2 Lite - Matterport Pro 1 - Ricoh Theta Z1 - Ricoh Theta V - Ricoh Theta SC2 - Insta360 One R - Twin Edition - Insta360 One X2 3. Potential to do Matterport AND other services during the SAME shoot (more $$$$$ to you) Snappr – the most popular on-demand photography platform that allows real estate brokerages and marketplaces to book high-volume photoshoots at scale – seeks Matterport Service Providers and Professional Real Estate Photographers in the United States, Canada, Australia the United Kingdom (and elsewhere around the globe) for recurring shoots from enterprise clients who are booking thousands of shoots every month. 4. Snappr likely has more enterprise (large) clients than Matterport. 10 Reasons to Join the Snappr On-Demand Photography Platform 1. Potential to fill openings in your schedule 2. Potential to do Matterport tours for enterprise-level clients 3. Potential to gain more Matterport experience 4. Potential to get recurring Matterport shoots 5. Potential to shoot Matterport, DSLR and video on the same shoot (More $$$$ per shoot) 6. Potential to diversify your client base 7. Potential to get shoots that you likely would not get directly 8. Potential to do Matterport shoots only (leave production to Snappr editors) 9. Potential to check-the-box on categories that you are not presently shooting Matterport tours 10. Potential to improve your cashflow (Snappr pays fast) For additional info, please see: ► Snappr website ► Snappr Photographer Interest Form ► Looking for Matterport Service Providers in the US ► Member of the Matterport Capture Services Program? Join Snappr MSP Program Here are the links we discussed on the show: 1. Snappr Website 2. Snappr Photographer Interest Form (talk to a Snappr rep about the Snappr for Photographers) 3. Apply to Join the Snappr for Photographers Network Best, Dan Complete the Snappr Photographer Interest Form by Tuesday, June 15, 2021 to learn more. Snappr Links ► Snappr Website ► Snappr LinkedIn ► Snappr Instagram ► Snappr Facebook ► Snappr Twitter ► Snappr Crunchbase ► Snappr Wikipedia -- Transcript (video above) - Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, June 24, 2021. And you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today. Introduction to Snappr for Matterport Service Providers and Professional Real Estate Photographers. Our subtext is how do Matterport Service Providers and Professional Real Estate Photographers Make Money with Snappr? And here to talk to us about it is, Rafat Khan. Rafat is the Head of Operations and a Founding Team Member at Snappr. Rafat, good to see you. Thanks for being on the show today. - Yeah, great to see you there. Thank you for having me. - Rafat, tell us about Snappr. - Yeah, I would love to. So Snappr is the largest and fastest growing, on-demand visual content creation marketplace in the world now. What we're building is the next household and enterprise, consumer and business brand for all visual content creation. It starts with still photography but goes into virtual reality, prints, video, et cetera. So it's a one-stop shop for photography as well as other forms of digital visual content needs for individuals, small businesses and enterprises. I would love to share, in this call, a little bit about the Snappr story; how we got started; what kind of problems we decided to take a crack at solving and the journey so far. - Awesome. Love to hear it. - Yeah, so Snappr was founded about five years ago in 2016, just crazy to think time's flown by, in Sydney, Australia and then moved the headquarters to San Francisco which is where we've been operating for the last four years or so. We were founded to solve the problem that professional photography was inaccessible to most people. There was this consensus from individuals and small businesses that booking a professional photo shoot was this cumbersome process that required a lot of time doing research, a lot of back and forth, pricing, and a lot of risk that the person you book is not going to be able to meet the expectations. There wasn't a lot of transparency in the market. There wasn't any sort of consolidated source of pre-vetted amazing quality photographers that customers could access easily. And most people were also priced out thinking that, "Yeah, professional photography is something I'm only going to do once in my life, maybe for a wedding and then everything else... It's going to be too expensive, so I'm not going to do it or it's going to be too cumbersome to try and find a photographer. So I'm just going to go without using my iPhone or something." So that was the problem on the consumer side that we decided to take a crack and to try and solve. And on the photographer's side, the problems that we heard from content creators was, "It is so incredibly difficult to try and find clients. I have to spend hours and hours on marketing, on paying money for advertising my services without much return." Or, "There are all these gaps in my schedule, all this downtime where I'm just sitting there sort of twiddling my thumbs, hoping that a shoot comes in." - Rafat, let's come back to photographers and stick with this -- maybe enterprise clients. So Snappr starts this on-demand platform, what's been the reaction by enterprise to the Snappr on-demand platform? - Yeah, great question. So like I was saying, Snappr started off as a platform mainly for consumers. So mainly designed to solve the needs for individuals and small businesses. What we started seeing in the first couple of years of Snappr kicking off is there are all these larger organizations that started using our consumer app to book photo shoots at scale across the entire organization. All of these automotive marketplaces, e-commerce platforms, real estate brokerages, et cetera were using Snappr because they needed photography at scale and didn't have another solution in the market. And they were using Snappr platform which was at the time decided primarily to book one-off photo shoots for a headshot or a family portrait or an engagement shoot, et cetera. But these business customers started using it and then started giving us feedback that, "Hey, this is incredibly useful. We need this. Your platform is designed for individuals. We want our entire organization, our entire company or team to use this. Can you design a product that meets certain needs for our organization?" That's how this Snappr for Enterprise product was created. It was born out of user feedback, inbound user feedback. We weren't even thinking of the enterprise use case initially. And then our customers pleaded for us to build something that solves their problems at scale. So, a couple of years ago, we launched the Snappr for Enterprise product catered to the needs of a lot of high volume listing companies. So food delivery, real estate brokerages, automobile marketplaces, e-commerce platforms, any company that has needs for hundreds or thousands of shoots a month spread across the world they come to Snappr looking for a sort of a one-stop shop for all their visual content needs. They don't want to build out an entire team of of in-house employees in different countries who are managing contractors individually because that obviously is a big big expense for them and Snappr, because we have this or had this pre-vetted professional photography network at scale around the world, we were able to offer a streamlined scalable solution to these enterprises along with a product that met some of the software needs for them as well. - Awesome. Rafat, you mentioned these enterprise clients; real estate. Obviously, our Community's very focused on residential and commercial real estate. Could you speak to that as a category for Snappr? - Yes, so for the consumer business, real estate was always in the top three highest volume shoot types across our platform. It was mainly portraiture, events and real estate. Those were the three main shoot types that we were always doing. So people booking were mainly individual real estate agents, home owners, Airbnb hosts, et cetera. And when we saw a lot of traction from food delivery clients, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms and automotive marketplaces, we thought, "Okay, we've now clearly have a product that works at scale for high volume listing marketplaces. We want to now build something that solves the problems for big real estate teams or real estate brokerages or real estate marketplaces as well." Let me know if I lose you because it's the internet connection, but- - Rock solid here. So when we talk about residential/commercial real estate is that individual real estate agents? Is it brokerages with one office with multiple agents? Or, is it a brand or brands across the United States or even around the globe? - It's a little bit of everything. So when we were initially founded it was mostly individuals, but now with this Snappr for Enterprise product we released our real estate offering earlier this year for Snappr for Enterprise with the virtual tour product. That's when we started actively meeting the needs of larger teams or larger brokerages or larger marketplaces. So we now have clients who are centrally managing their global photography operations through this Snappr platform. So for example, Pacaso is a real estate company that allows consumers to purchase a share of a vacation home. And so they need amazing quality photos and virtual tours and video for these incredible vacation rental properties around the country but they don't want to hire people full time in all of these different markets to manage photo operations. So they tell us, "Hey, here's our next vacation rental property that needs photographed, here are the details." We take that: we find the best photographer for that shoot in that location. Generally for Pacaso, these are vacation homes. So they're in sort of resort towns like Tahoe, Palm Springs, et cetera. And then we'll match them with the best photographer, ideally, someone living nearby and then they'll go and do the shoot. Pacaso doesn't worry about those photo shoot logistics. They booked the shoot and they got the content back and that content powers their platform. So that's an example of the other recent new client of ours. But yeah, we're seeing interest from marketplaces, brokerages, teams and everything in between. - You mentioned Snappr for Enterprise and your website talks about an API. It's a little bit geeky, but could you talk a little bit about what that Snappr API is and why that might matter to our Community? - Yes, so the reason that offering an API integration is interesting to the photographer community -- We Get Around Network is that it is a differentiator for Snappr to enterprise level clients that leads to us attracting clients who otherwise would not have the tech solutions from another platform like Snappr. And so an API integration allows a client to access Snappr's product without using Snappr's software. So we built a portal where, let's say you're running a real estate team. You can sign up on Snappr, purchase credits and then give your entire team access to the portal and your team can go on our website, put in the details of a shoot, fine, look for photographers and then book a photo shoot, and then manage the photos. But there are enterprise clients we have who are operating at such a high volume that it doesn't make sense for individual team members to go in and book photo shoots. They want to automate that process from end-to-end as much as possible from photo shoot booking all the way to photo or content collection. So for example, if a real estate marketplace they have their hosts or end customers or their sellers, the ones who need the photos or the virtual tour to sell the home or rent the home out, they are clients of that marketplace. So using the Snappr API, the real estate marketplace could build their own, usually they have their own portals for their sellers or hosts, right? So in their portal, they can create a button that says, Book photo shoot. And that button, if they click it, if their hosts or owners or sellers click it, will automatically book a photo shoot for them, automatically pass on all of their details, all the relevant details to Snappr that triggers the photo shoot in the backend, sends the photographer or connects the photographer to that host and then once the photos are taken, the photographers obviously upload the content and that content gets delivered automatically to the marketplace, all without any humans being involved. And so, the API solves some of the bottlenecks involved with humans having to get involved with booking individual photo shoots. When you're booking thousands of shoots, ideally you want to take as much of the friction out of the picture as possible, and just leave the point of contact at the property who needs to book the photo shoot with the photographer who needs to take the photos and take Snappr, take the real estate marketplace and any other people who need to get involved, part of the picture to streamline that process. - Awesome. Before I ask you about photographers -- Matterport Service Providers -- other platforms in this space: is Snappr the biggest; offering more services? How do you describe Snappr related to other on-demand platforms? - Snappr is the biggest in the U.S and in Australia, which are the two main markets that we've been in since we started. We're now in six countries. So Canada, New Zealand, we recently launched into the UK, Singapore, et cetera. So in the markets that we've been in for awhile, we're definitely the biggest. We haven't really expanded into Europe. We launched in the UK recently and are excited building up our enterprise offering there. Canada, we're I think the biggest as well. So in terms of competitors, there are companies doing or focused on different aspects of the photography market. Some people focus on the consumer, some people focus on travels, some people focus on weddings or head shots, some enterprise, some focus on just enterprise but Snappr is the biggest platform that's focused on the entire sort of photography industry, consumer and enterprise. Consumer, small business and enterprise across all shoot types with the exception of weddings. And these are the markets that we're operating in. - Excuse me, is it biggest, is that based on the percent of Fortune 500 companies that use Snappr? Is it based on the volume of the number of clients? Is it based on the output of the amount of photography? How do you put your hands around we're the largest, Snappr is the largest? - Take your pick. Any of the above. Yeah, just in terms of footprint. In terms of how many clients are using us, how much content we're generating and delivering to clients. We've taken millions of photos at this point, tens of thousands of customers, both consumers and enterprises. And we'll probably done more food photo shoots, for example, for food delivery apps than any other photography platform. And so, yeah, when it comes to content, we're a marketplace, right? So we're connecting the two sides of the marketplace, so the best way to judge size is the volume that's being transacted through the marketplace between the two parties. And so when you look at how many photos we're taking, how many shoots we're doing, how many clients were making happy across all of those metrics in the markets that we're operating in, no one is doing more of it. - And you mentioned you started in 2016. We're just about five years later. I believe Snappr has gotten close to $13 million in funding. Am I close? About right? In just five years, it sounds like there's been an incredible pace of growth; like a rocket ship taking off. What has been the impact of the pandemic? - Yeah, definitely hyper-growth, Snappr has been in hyper-growth since the beginning and obviously the rounds of funding that we raised helped us, the venture funding helped us continue to fuel that growth and solve problems with a lot of firepower and ammunition, which has been awesome. I guess, creating a startup is not easy. It takes a lot of work, but we have a phenomenal team of people who are incredibly passionate about content creation and photography about helping small businesses, helping solve the problems with enterprises, helping empower content creators to do what they love for a living. So it's a combination of great investment, amazing talent within the team, and a lot of conviction in the problem that needs to get solved for both sides of the marketplace. We've been very fortunate that we've put the puzzle pieces together really well so far and hope to continue to do so. - Did the pandemic initiate the interest in Matterport tours and virtual tours? - It was a trigger. It had been something we've been thinking about for a little while in terms of launching the virtual tour product, but the pandemic helped us prioritize it sooner than we would have, because we saw such a shift in how people were transacting online because the pandemic obviously, initially, real estate agents could no longer even do open homes so we saw a lot of people purchasing property or even rentals, signing up for rental agreements just without visiting the property at all, doing it all online. And so the need for visual content skyrocketed during the pandemic. And so Snappr actually, yeah, experienced hyper-growth throughout the pandemic as well. And real estate has been one of the top verticals or shoot types that has grown during that time. One of our top segments because there's so many transactions that are now happening purely online as a result of the restrictions put in place by governments during the pandemic. And so now, even though we're coming out of the pandemic somewhat in the U.S, you're seeing that trend continue. You're seeing people continuing to rely on visual content to particularly, obviously, photography, virtual tours and video tours to help them make up their minds about whether or not to pursue a property. - And in terms of the services that you provide is it photos, snaps -- photos -- what else? - We started with just photos. So Snappr started as an on-demand photography marketplace but when we took a critical look at the real estate market, we realized that in order for us to solve the problems of big real estate marketplaces and brokerages and teams, we would need to offer much more than just still photos. So we've talked to them, we got a lot of great user feedback and they gave us a laundry list of content creation needs that we have been prioritizing in order. And shortly after photos were virtual tours, so we decided to build that out. So now we have a standard fidelity and high fidelity virtual tour offering, which is sort of how we describe it. A high fidelity is Matterport 4K whereas standard fidelity is sort of other really good virtual 3D capture cameras, but non Matterport ones that don't have the precision of a Matterport 4K camera. - Help me out, Rafat. We're still talking about Matterport digital twins, Matterport 3D tours. In one case we're talking about using a Matterport Pro2, Pro1 or Pro2 Lite 3D Camera. And then the other cameras we're talking about are Ricoh Theta V, Ricoh Theta Z1, Ricoh Theta SC2, Insta360 ONE X2, Insta360 ONE R Twin- - Impressive that you're- Yes. - Yeah. But we're still talking about Matterport? - Yeah, we're still talking about Matterport scans but because the equipment, the Matterport brand cameras offer a higher precision in terms of their sensing ability, we charge a higher price for scans taken with a Matterport camera, and also obviously pass on higher earnings to the Matterport providers. - So in our conversation, if I hear you say virtual tour, that's synonymous with Matterport, but there are two flavors of Matterport. And so there's actually a demand, not only for Matterport Service Providers that shoot with the Matterport Pro2, Pro1 or Pro2 Lite; but those Matterport Service Providers that use other cameras as I just listed. - That's correct. And that list is growing every day, right? So as new camera's enter the market that can offer incredible Matterport scans with high precision, we'll continue to add them to our list of accepted cameras. - Okay. So we have some kind of scale and scope of Snappr. About a month ago, you reached out to me and you had a problem and you were wondering if we could help you with. Do you recall that conversation? - Yes. Before we jump into that, just want to let you know that Snappr scope does not end at Matterport 3D scans. We are now actually releasing a video, virtual video tours as well. We're now looking at drone aerial footage; aerial photos and video as well. And so we're looking at 3D floor plans. So our goal is to be the one-stop shop for all visual content needs, remember, so it started with photography, evolved to 3D scans but now we are building out the whole suite of real estate content offerings. And so we're trying to meet the needs of all real estate clients with that suite. But yeah, going back to your question or leading into your question. Yes. Obviously, remember that -- and sort of tell everyone a little bit about the context with which we got connected. As we scaled our separate enterprise offering in particular, as we launched our virtual tour offering and started scaling our real estate product, we saw a lot of interest from real estate enterprise clients who came to us and asked us for global coverage of the photographers and virtual tour providers to meet their visual content needs around the world. And so when we saw that influx of demand, we made a decision to just start scaling our network of partner photographers and partner virtual tour providers. And we have been very successful at bringing on real estate photographers, still photographers and videographers, and made good progress in bringing on virtual tour providers with non Matterport brand cameras. But we found it difficult to find a source of a Community of content creators with Matterport Pro cameras who could do Matterport virtual tours. So, we got connected in that context. I noticed that We Get Around Network was a Community of content creators, many of whom had Matterport brand cameras as well as obviously still photography and Matterport brand cameras as well. So, I thought I'd reach out and see if there was an opportunity for us to collaborate. - Yes, glad you did. So this is kind of a little bit of a chicken and the egg kind of question. What comes first? Does demand come first? Or, does building up the photographer network come first? Are you at the point where Snappr has more demand than you have Matterport Service Providers to shoot the content? - Yes, yes, we are. It goes hand-in-hand, right? It's the original set of problems for marketplaces. Do you get clients first or do you get providers first? And the answer is, if you try to do both in parallel you get some photographers to be able to offer the service at the very beginning. And then once you get initial interest, you start growing that photography base. With enterprise in particular, we're at a point where it takes a little bit of time for us to set up an enterprise, onboard an enterprise. So we have obviously a list of enterprise clients who are using Snappr today but also a list of enterprise clients who are in the onboarding stage or who we are in the initial discussion stage with and that list is growing every day. So we can see our funnel of enterprise real estate customers coming down the line. And so we know that as this product scales, we're going to need more providers. So today, yes, we need more providers based on clients that we have today. Obviously, that's concentrated in certain cities where those clients need providers and we currently don't have providers, but then we also have a list of cities that our clients, prospective or future clients have already given us that when we are ready to activate their accounts and they're ready to start shooting, they're going to need providers there. Because there's obviously a little bit of lead time to bring on partner providers. So we try to get the process started as early as possible and time it, so that the demand and supply meet at the same time. Obviously, easier said than done and sometimes there's a bit of lag on both sides. - So, I think what I'm hearing is actually ... ... a runway where you are at different stages. So you may have clients; Snappr may have clients today-today-today in specific markets where you need a Matterport Service Provider immediately because you don't have one then you're starting the onboarding process of new clients and they've already identified, they're interested in Matterport tours or not just Matterport but maybe in case of a real estate brokerage agent - brand - photos, Matterport, video, drone and I think what I'm hearing is coming soon - floor plans and maybe painted rocks or something else that they're interested in. So the second category is: they are Snappr clients, "we're onboarding them and they've identified what their digital asset needs are and that includes Matterport and other digital assets." And then presumably your sales team is in the midst of talking to some large enterprise clients. We're probably having a little bit of a dance with you about, "But we're interested in Matterport if you're able to provide that." And you're trying to perhaps pre-qualify them about what markets/where. And so I guess that kind of leads us to if you're a photographer, you may get onboarded today for an immediate job, but you may get onboarded for a job that's likely to come soon or a job that may possibly come. So a little bit of... - Yeah. Yeah. The experience of a photographer today on the platform will obviously vary across markets. And then that will change over time. So what we try to do is actively source photographers in the markets where we expect there to be demand for one reason or another. Either because we have clients who are asking, actively asking for those cities, for us to increase coverage in those cities or because we know just looking at the real estate market that there are clients who we would like to approach at some point where we know that there's a lot of that real estate activity in that market. And we'd like to build up coverage in anticipation of future demand. And so a photographer coming in and- - Excuse me, let's talk a little bit about why would a photographer be interested in joining Snappr or let's say Matterport Service Providers in particular, professional real estate photographers in general. Why join the Snappr platform to provide services? - Yeah, there's a range of reasons. I'll cover a few of the top ones. A few that are applicable to photographers and content creators across verticals, regardless of what type of shoots they do. And then a few that are specific to real estate. So, yeah, as I was sort of touching on at the very beginning, one of the problems we identified that we were solving while building this marketplace was that content creators wanted access to more photo-shoots, but they either found it difficult to find that volume or were spending a lot of money in search for that volume, or even if they found that volume, they had a lot of periods of downtime, a lot of block or empty blocks in their calendar that they would ideally like to fill up with photo shoots because they love shooting. And they'd rather not sit at home on Craigslist or elsewhere trying to find leads. - That's great. I have gaps in my schedule. I get that. "I get to perhaps fill in some gaps where I'm not busy." What other reasons for a photographer to join your platform? In particular Matterport Service Providers, real estate photographers in particular? - Yes. So with real estate in particular, a lot of photographers are looking for work, a lot of the work is coming from clients that are not individually contracting -- ... not contracting individual photographers. Some of the highest volume marketplaces or brokerages or teams, don't have the bandwidth to individually manage relationships with thousands of photographers. So they then turn to solutions like Snappr and lean on companies like us to go and give them access to that network- - Second reason, which is it's business that you're not going to get otherwise. - Yes, exactly. Because these enterprise clients just don't have the bandwidth to go and search individual photographers: we do because we're building... This is our marketplace and this is what we do. And so Snappr gives photographers access to clients that they would otherwise not have access to because we have these enterprise level, organization level relationships with big brands, big clients that book photo shoots at scale around the world. And so we allow clients to book photo shoots in Sydney, Australia and the same day as San Francisco and same day as Toronto or London with different photographers. And we know the client's needs, so we try to make sure that that client gets that content in a way that is consistent and meets their brand expectations regardless of which photographers are doing the photo shoots. - So I hear that from the brand, but from the photographer's perspective I'm looking for other reasons why, "I'm a Matterport Service Provider. Why should I express interest in joining the Snappr platform?" - Yeah, so the reason I mention the value add for Snappr to enterprise clients is that because of that value add, we're able to bring to bear the volume of these enterprise clients onto our partner photography community, which they otherwise would not have access to so- - But I've heard two reasons. First, my schedule. Second, it's clients I'm not going to get otherwise because of the way the brand wants to interact with photographers. Are there other reasons? - Yes, so the variety or diversity of types of shoots is another big one. Obviously, we have both a consumer and an enterprise marketplace and have different individuals, small businesses and enterprises looking to book photo shoots, video shoots, photo tour shoots, aerial shoots within the real estate space. So if real estate providers are looking for or real estate content providers are looking for shoots where they can do a variety of different types of shoots, then they have access to that. And that usually leads to them having higher price shoots as well because all of our enterprise clients are booking a photo shoot that's a bundle of different services. So instead of just going off and doing a one-hour real estate shoot, they're booking a four or five-hour real estate shoot where a photographer can offer multiple services for the same property. - Photos, video, drone, perhaps full floor plans at some point and maybe other services. So you're scheduled with clients you might not get otherwise; diversify your client base; shoot content perhaps that you haven't done before. Maybe get some bundled opportunities: so that it's a higher ticket price. I'll ask you about the price coming up. - On the same topic there are probably a lot of real estate photographers at least from feedback that I've gotten from our real estate partner providers that said this, and this may be applicable to photographers in your Community [www.WGANForum.com] as well. A lot of real estate providers are also doing, are either are interested in doing or are currently doing shoots for other shoot types outside of real estate. They're interested in doing portraiture or events or product shoots. And so, to the extent that they're interested in diversifying their portfolio or increasing their experience in other shoot types because Snappr is offering photo shoots at scale across all shoot types, a real estate provider can come on and also sign up to do product shoots for e-commerce platforms or portrait shoots for families or a corporate event shoots for businesses and everything in between as well. --- (Continued below ...) |
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| (Continued from above ...) --- - "I started as a residential photographer. I shoot Matterport for residential. Snappr has a big box retail space. My portfolio would say, I have a lot of experience shooting Matterport for real estate. I haven't shot a big box retail store. I'm still considered a subject matter expert on using Matterport therefore you're okay having us shoot for perhaps a different category that we haven't shot before?" - Yes. Obviously, we try to prioritize photographers who do have experience in a certain shoot type but ultimately the customers have the ability to select which photographer they want to work with. And so in certain cases, they may want to work with a photographer who has experience in a different type of shoot. And we are more than happy to connect them with providers like that. - If I just think in that big box example, because I guess what occurs to me is to say maybe if you're sooner working with Snappr while it's still early in the process of offering Matterport that having 10 years experience, I'm going to say having 11 years of experience with Matterport because it's only been around 10 years. And gosh, I think it really started when I bought my Matterport camera in July of 2014. So if you're kind of sooner than later, then you actually may have the most experience at that moment within the Snappr platform even though you've never shot a different category. So it sounds like it may be an opportunity to actually pick up the experience in categories and then be able to have that experience to offer locally to other similar types of clients. - Yes, and currently within real estate, going back to your original question, we match real estate photographers with commercial real estate shoot opportunities and vice versa. So we don't limit a residential real estate photographer to only residential real estate photo shoots or video shoots or virtual tour shoots. They will have the opportunity to be matched to commercial shoots as well. We're not going to limit them from doing the shoot. - But is there an opportunity to improve my cashflow with Snappr? - To the extent that photographers don't want to worry about invoicing and billing and chasing payments and want to streamline their payments process, Snappr is a great solution for that because we are collecting payment from the clients ahead of time before the photo shoot happen, at the time that the photo shoot is booked and they were holding the funds in escrow. And then as soon as the photo shoot is completed we then cue that shoot for payment. And then we have a consistent predictable payment cycle once every two weeks. So the first and the 15th, generally every month where photographers receive the payments for all shoots completed in the prior two weeks. So photographers know what their predictable cash flow is going to look like. They don't have to go chasing invoices and do all this paperwork. We take care of it. - If I've delivered my job on the 12th or 13th or 14th, imagine there's some feature where the client has to accept. " Yes, I'm happy with what I got." At that point, then on the 15th, the funds would be released to me? - Correct, yes. - Okay. Awesome. And so there actually is a chance to kind of improve maybe cashflow that you're not struggling to get collections done. So in terms of money, we all want to know, "how much am I going to get paid? How much am I going to be paid?" Can you give us some sense of either what Snappr charges and/or what photographers can expect to receive? - Yeah, happy to. Obviously, there's a very detailed sort of fee schedule that we share with partner photographers during the onboarding phase so that they have access to that information. And we're very transparent with our partner providers, so they know what they're opting into. Excuse me. I'm happy to share some sort of ballpark numbers so they know what to expect. If you just look at a less than 1,000 square foot virtual tour shoot, just a standalone virtual tour, photographers can expect net, after Snappr fees around $140 for that shoot. And then let's say, it's a bigger space. Let's say four to 5,000 square feet just for Matterport virtual tour shoot, they can expect $250 for that shoot. Again, net of Snappr fees. And then as clients add on other services that increase the ticket price-wise, they add photo shoots depending on the complexity of the photo shoot that can add another $50 or $100 that shoot. If they also shoot video, obviously that adds time. So generally you can expect with every hour that gets added on that there's an extra depending on the complexity, additional a $100 tagged on to every hour, or maybe more depending on how complex the requirement is. And so there are photo shoots, if there's a big 10,000 square foot property where there's drone and video and virtual tour and photos all bundled together, photographers could easily earn anywhere between $500 to $,1000 just from one shoot. And then Snappr charges the client a slightly higher amount and takes a marketplace fee for all of the services that we're providing to cover our costs basically. So we obviously have costs to acquire that customer. we also edit in-house all the photos that- - Is probably yet another reason that if you're used to shooting photos, but not editing them until late into the night, but you like shooting but you don't really like the editing. I guess that would be another reason to join the Snappr platform, perhaps get out of the editing business or to have jobs that don't require a post-production. - Yes, exactly. So a lot of our clients need rapid turnaround times. And so, if you're booked for back-to-back photo shoots for the next two, three days, where are you going to find the time to edit? The client made it very clear at the beginning of the relationship that they need 24-hour turnaround time or around 48-hour turnaround time to even engage in this relationship. So the way we fulfill that promise without burning our partner photographers out is that we have this in-house editing product and team that's using automations and human talent, combining all of that to try and apply amazing quality edits to these photos as quickly as possible and turning them around to the clients without the photographer having to bear that burden and obviously to cover those costs that goes into our marketplace. We also cover all of the Matterport hosting fees and processing fees as well. So we try to take as much of the administrative advertising non-shooting burden away from the photographer as much as possible. And then we cover those costs. - I'm going to mention that there's two websites for photographers. We'll call it three. First: www.snappr.com which is really the enterprise client facing side of the website. But if you go to: www.snappr.com/join-us www.snappr.com/join-us Then that's the page that is specifically for photographers who are interested in joining the platform, and then we'll add one more which is just kind of a quick, easy form. www.WGAN.INFO/snappr that goes to the Snappr Photographer Interest Form: www.WGAN.INFO/snappr Tell me about the process. I go fill out this Snappr Photographer Interest Form or I say, "Great, I've been watching the show today, sounds good. It sounds like it doesn't cost me anything to join. I fill out the Snappr Photographer Interest Form: Snappr Photographer Interest Form then what happens?" - So photographers interested in joining Snappr, I have two options, like you mentioned. They can either go to our website directly, www.snappr.com/join-us and they can start the self-service onboarding process right there. And so that process is divided up into three stages mainly. It's an application where the photographer gives us their basic details, tells a little bit about the shoot types. They're interested in their experience and that creates an application to join the Snappr Partner Photographer Network. Our team reviews those applications. And then if it meets the criteria that we have set for those shoot types. So for a virtual tour, for example, equipment is the most important thing. So we'll check to see what equipment you've said you have. And if you have one of the cameras that you mentioned, you're interested in doing virtual tour shoots or have a wide-angle lens for real estate, et cetera. And you'll upload some portfolio photos as well. If you're trying to do still photo shoots. We'll look at that application and if assuming that everything looks good, we'll extend an invitation to the photographer to come and schedule a call with us; an interview and sort of begin stage two of the onboarding process where we share our sort of resource packet where they learn about how Snappr works; the details of it. I shared a little bit about it but obviously there's much more to it. How the app works, how the photo shoot works, how they can communicate with clients, what the fees are for different shoot types and different services. So they get all of that information when we invite them to the next stage. And then they schedule a call with the Snappr team member. Once that call is done... During that call, we just try to get to know the photographer, learn a little bit about why they're interested in working with us, what kind of experience they have, et cetera. And assuming that call goes really well, we invite them to finish onboarding, finish their set-up, download the app and sort of just polish their profile up. Upload any more photos they want to set up their profile to make it look good. Because remember, we're not just marketing to enterprise clients, but also to consumers and individuals who are actually looking at your profile, your profile photo, your portfolio photos, your bio, your experience when making a decision on who to book. And so we try to guide the photographers through that last stage to just set up their account so that they're ready to start taking bookings. And then once their account is activated they're ready to start shooting. So three stages: they apply; then they sort of review all of the information we send to them and schedule a call. And after they do the call, they just finished setting up their account. You can do this all in a few days. Sometimes it may take a little while to schedule the interview depending on interviewer availability, but in terms of the actual process of setting up the accounts, you can do it very, very quickly. And then if they're interested in talking to a team member before they apply, because they have a few follow-up questions from this call, for example, they can fill out the Snappr Photographer Interest Form that you referenced, which is just a simple form where you just type in your contact details. And what will happen is a Snappr team member will reach out: usually within a week with more information or with a link or an invitation to schedule a call sort of a screening call or a call before you go through the application process. - Great, and the Snappr Photographer Interest Form: www.WGAN.INFO/snappr So, I go ahead and join. I'm accepted. My portfolio is now alive. How do I manage it so that I don't get booked when I'm not available? Or if somebody picks me for a job but I don't want to do that job can I reject it? So how's my schedule? And then do I have any say over what jobs that I decide to do or not do? - Yeah. So we ask photographers ahead of time to sync their calendars with the Snappr app. So if they have a Google Calendar, they can sync it directly with the Snappr app. And the Snappr app knows from their calendar when they have blocks or when they're busy. And the photographers will also be able to set their general working hours. They can say, "Okay. I'm free or I'm interested in doing photo-shoots from 8 AM to 7 PM, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays except for when I have blocks on my calendar on those days." So the Snappr app knows when the photographer has shared that they're available. If they don't have Google Calendar, they also have the option to just block off individual times or individual dates when they're not shooting ahead of time. - Other than my schedule availability, do I have a way to decline a project? - No. So that's one of the key value adds of Snappr as a platform is that it is truly on-demand for enterprises and consumers and for it to be truly on-demand, to maintain that on-demand experience for the customers. We don't want clients to book a photo shoot, go through the process of picking a photographer, getting attached to that portfolio, start expecting or thinking about what the end result is going to look like only to find out that the photographer is not available or the photographer rejected that shoot. And so we don't want to go through that process. So what we do ahead of time is ask the photographer to only pick the shoot types that they're interested in doing that way we know ahead of time. Okay. You were only interested in doing real estate shoots, still shoots, or you're only interested in doing virtual tour shoots, or you're only interested in doing real estate virtual tours, but not video or you are only interested in doing real estate, all real estate and all portraits and nothing else. And so we make sure that we only match you to those shoot types. - Great, let me ask the question a little bit differently because Matterport is not quite as straightforward as maybe booking a photo shoot for a house. And I guess what I'm trying to ask is how knowledgeable is Snappr to make sure that the job -- let's see -- how to say this? A 5,000 square foot space that's fully furnished is way different than a 5,000 square foot space that is totally empty, which is way different than a space that might have outdoors and then that presents its own set of challenges. So is it possible that Matterport Service Providers might be booked for a job where the estimate of time is out of sync with really the amount of work that it would take to do that job? - For Enterprise? No. Because during the enterprise onboarding process our team is heavily involved. We have professional photographers on our team who work with the enterprises during onboarding to create a package for them that makes sure that photographers are able to meet the expectations of the client within the constraints of that package. - Thank you. That's what I'm asking -- is to really have apples-to-apples so that the photographer doesn't show up and go, "Wow, this job is twice as complex as what I'm going to get paid." - The photographer is actually... Let me speak a little bit more to the process for Snappr Enterprise shoots, because I think that's what's going to be most interesting to your Community, anyway. When we bring on an Enterprise client, we work very closely with them to understand their needs. Then we create a photographer shoot guide. The professional photographers at Snappr in our headquarters; they're working with these clients to understand what their needs are. Create a brief and then we create a shoot guide that details out exactly what the shoot's going to entail but the expectations of the client are and this shoot guide, as soon as the shoot is booked, gets sent to the photographer for the photographer to look at. So the photographer is not going to get caught off guard when they show-up at the shoot, because they are going to receive a very detailed shoot brief. And they're going to have the opportunity in most cases to jump on a call with the person coordinating the shoot at the Enterprise client to discuss the shoot brief ahead of time. And then- - I actually missed that, is the photographer getting to talk to the client or the photographer gets to talk to the Snappr Rep? - The client. - Yeah. - Yeah, again, Snappr is just here to match the client and the photographer- - Actually, an Enterprise-size client has a really good brief on what to expect but still can call ahead to talk to the client to understand perhaps ... where's the sun going to be in terms of the time we're shooting related to will we be able to accomplish what you're expecting because you asked for two different buildings, but then go outside but there's sunlight and that affects the Pro2 camera. So those kinds of questions can all get resolved with the photographer actually talking to the client ahead of time to help either: manage expectations or perhaps be able to go back to Snappr and say, "Hey, I think there's a disconnect here in terms of the scope of the work, the amount of time that's been assigned, the payment is for this project." So there is an opportunity for the photographer to perhaps push back a little bit. But I think what I'm hearing is that shouldn't happen because you're really trying to get the scope of the work really tight and defined ahead of time to avoid exactly that kind of challenge. - Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So Snappr is not the customer. Like we are not the photographers' customers. The photographers aren't doing work for Snappr. They're not employed by Snappr. We are just a matchmaking service at the end of the day. So we're connecting the photographer with the opportunity. We try to guide the photographer and guide the client when it's appropriate and try to make sure we do our part in helping both parties engage in a successful transaction. And for enterprise clients that means we co-author the shoot guide with the client. Generally, we get photographer feedback during that process as well because during the client onboarding process, we'll do a few trial shoots with a few of our trusted photographers and we'll collect their feedback. And sometimes they'll co-author the shoot guide with us to make sure that the shoot guide is fair and the expectations are managed. And then ultimately, we can try to prescribe -- the shoot guide can try to prescribe or predict what's going to happen. But ultimately every photo shoot is different, right? So that's why we end up ultimately just connecting a customer and the photographer. In most cases, for most shoots it's actually a requirement of our set of community guidelines or requirement for that partnership that the photographer actually calls the customer. That connection needs to happen before the photo shoot to confirm the shoot, to go over expectations, to make any adjustments necessary so that when the photographer arrives, the shoot goes really well. - One of the challenges that many of our community experiences, the job is scheduled for 10 AM, the client's just not ready. It doesn't start till 10:30 AM. Now what? - So remember, clients already booked the shoot, we've already collected payment, and we've already set expectations with the client on what the outcome of that shoot is. So if a customer's a no-show at the shoot, for example, our agreement with the client is that the photographer is still going to get paid because the photographer showed up. They prepared for the shoot, they arrived at the shoot location. When it comes to customers arriving late, we generally trust the photographer and the customer to sort of work it out. But the sort of guardrails that we'll put in place will allow the photographer and the client to extend the shoot, if necessary, and if the photographer's schedule can accommodate it. And so what we'll then end up doing is extending the duration. If it all goes well and the enterprise client approves the extension then we'll, let's say it's a two-hour shoot, client arrived 30 minutes late, a photographer tries to finish the shoot in an hour and a half, but realizes that, no, you need the extra half hour, the shoot goes over by 30 minutes. And now it's sort of a two and a half hour shoot. As long as the client has approved that extension and the photographer has agreed to do the shoot for that extra time, we'll make sure the client is charged for the extra 30 minutes and that the photographer is paid for the extra 30 minutes. So yeah. It's not uncommon for shoots to go over time for a variety of reasons that can be out of anyone's control. - Awesome to hear there's actually a mechanism for that. And the photographer is going to get, hopefully, paid some additional money if in fact that it's going longer than because the client is now 30 minutes late on the shoot. Two last questions. So first, are there three burning frequently asked questions by photographers that you want to talk about? And my second question, is there anything else that we haven't covered today that you really feel that it would be helpful for Matterport Service Providers in particular and a professional real estate photographer in general to know that we haven't discussed? First up, frequently asked questions by photographers. - I think you covered a lot of them. And I think the other really big question we always get is how much volume can I expect? How many shoots can I expect? How many shoots are you doing right now? - Rafat, how much volume can I expect? - And that's a very difficult question to answer because it looks very different for every market, for every photographer. We generally try to limit the number of photographers that we onboard in a given city to keep utilization high. So we don't want to bring on 100 photographers in a market if there's only one shoot per week there, right? And so, we generally try to match demand and supply whenever possible but obviously there will be some photographers who sign up to do shoots in a market where we are still working on onboarding a new client or where... Because of the pandemic, there's still closures there. So there are no shoots happening and other variety of factors. So it's very difficult to manage that, or to answer that question, but generally photographers can count on us to make sure that we don't have oversupply and that we are always working on bringing on new clients to bring them work. Ultimately, we're not charging the photographer any sort of subscription fee or entrance fee or anything like that. Snappr only earns a marketplace fee if the photographer earns a fee. So our incentives are perfectly aligned with the photographer in that it is in our best interest to make sure the photographer is doing shoots and is happy. So to the extent possible, we're always trying to fill up their schedule, but obviously in some cities it takes a little bit longer to bring a city online or for a certain shoot time in a certain city to get traction. So that's probably the most popular question. And also the one that is almost impossible to answer at scale, because it looks so different for each person. And then, I guess the one sort of final comment that I'll leave interested partner photographers with is that I'd like to manage expectations on what Snappr is today. We are still an early stage startup, right? So we only started about five years ago, our product has taken off and it solved a lot of people's problems. And there are photographers for doing Snappr full-time, like relieving on Snappr full-time. It's their only source of photo shoots in cities like San Francisco where we have a lot of volume and New York. And there are other cities where photographers are only doing a few shoots a week to fill up gaps here and there. Either way, we are working very closely with our partner photographers and customers to continue to work on our product, to build our product up to get it to a stage where it is meeting the needs of everyone. But to manage expectations, when a photographer joins day one, there will be certain things about their experience that's going to leave something to be desired. And when Airbnb was first founded, Airbnb hosts probably had a laundry list of features and requests from Airbnb. And with obviously limited time, you can only build so quickly. So Airbnb would have prioritized the most high priority features first. We're doing something very similar with collecting feedback from photographers and building the things that make most sense holistically. And then over time, we hope to have a really mature, sophisticated product that meets all the needs of every single photographer. But we're obviously not there yet because we're building something and we invite photographers to come and work with us and partner with us and help us build a product that will solve their problems and give us critical feedback. And we love partner photographers who are interested in building, helping us build something with them. And to the extent possible, we try to bring photographers into the team and collect feedback and give them updates on what's coming down the road. But if a photographer is expecting Snappr to be a fully finished product that is fully mature, fully built and we'll never have any flaws or drawbacks, they're probably going to be disappointed because we still have a long way to go. And so, any photographer who's listening probably knows what it's like to start a business from scratch, because they've probably done it. And so Snappr is doing the same thing. We have an incredible team of people who are very talented and are working around the clock to work with our partner photographers to build a product they will learn to love that will support their business that will help them grow and empower them to do what they love for a living. And we invite people to come and work with us, who trust that we have their best interests at heart and want to actively engage in the building process with us. So that one day we'll look back and think, "Okay, yeah, we worked together to build something that people want and something that people love. So, I will leave you with that. - Awesome. I noticed this week in the We Get Around Network Forum, www.WGANForum.com you've posted Matterport Service Provider wanted: professional real estate photographer wanted, these help wanted posts in the We Get Around Network Forum. Does that mean you have an immediate need or are you just building out a market in general? - Generally, it means we are looking for a photographer ASAP because we have an immediate need or a need that we expect to materialize in the near future. And so because the onboarding process takes a little bit of time sometimes we're trying to prioritize the city where we expect there to be highest demand. And so, yeah, we are generally looking for photographers all over the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. Real estate photographers, virtual tour providers and videographers. Some of those help wanted posts are in cities where we have active clients where we really need a photographer immediately, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco Bay Area. These are examples of markets where we're actively doing shoots today. And the photographers, when they joined, can expect to start doing shoots from day one. And there are other cities that are probably not in help wanted posts but in sort of the general listing posts where we're trying to build coverage, where we expect there to be demand maybe in the middle of the next quarter or later in the quarter. - Awesome. Because I actually think there's three calls-to-action here for our audience. First, if you're a Matterport Service Provider - professional real estate photographer - and you're interested in learning more, Snappr Photographer Interest Form at: www.WGAN.INFO/snappr Second, if you're ready to actually go apply, you've listened to this show. You're ready to get started, you can go to: www.snappr.com/join-us Third, pay attention in the We Get Around Network Forum because that means if you see help wanted notice in a specific market by Snappr, it's hot and it jumps the queue in terms of getting on boarded because there's either an immediate need or just about to be an immediate need. And I think I would just add one observation. Snappr is starting out even though it is this global on-demand platform. You're still building out some markets that you don't have either a Matterport Service Provider or a professional real estate photographer in general. And therefore, if you're a photographer you really want to be first or first or second or third because if you're 10th or 11th, you may never get onboarded because it may not be the demand there. So if you really think you're interested in Snappr then you really want to sign up as quickly as possible, so that you're part of that onboarding before the onboarding closes because the demand in your market's not there. Did I summarize that okay? - Yes, absolutely. So we do have a waitlist. And so we get to a point in some markets where we've reached the number of photographers that maximum of photographers we can onboard without decreasing utilization for everybody. So, then any incremental applications that come in, we just sort of put them on the waitlist and from there we'll reach back out to them whenever there's more demand. And so it is in their best interest to make sure that they get onboarded early so that they don't have to wait for us to get new clients before they get onboarded. - Awesome! Thank you so much for being on the show today. - Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. - We have been visiting with Rafat Khan. He is the Head of Operations and a Founding Team Member of Snappr: based in San Francisco. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. # # # # # |
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Expertise private msg quote post Address this user | |
| THIS is a non-starter for us => Other than my schedule availability, do I have a way to decline a project? No. So that's one of the key value adds of Snappr as a platform is that it is truly on-demand for enterprises and consumers and for it to be truly on-demand, to maintain that on-demand experience for the customers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, if I had an appointment that has been set 2 weeks ago with an existing client, and Snappr books me at the same time, I would have to cancel my previous appointment. Not gonna happen. |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Expertise If you block out time/appointments on your calendar, Snappr will not book those times. Does that help? For clarification, On-Demand bookings is about filling whole is your schedule. Would it be helpful to block out all your time weeks in advance and then only create openings at the last minute? (You could block out your entire schedule with one Google Calendar entry.) Dan |
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leeverdon private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I made some enquiries. On average, Snappr takes a 45% cut for photos & virtual tour only products. If it's a combo then they take a 36% cut. They do all the editing which is a time saver. However, Snappr's pricing is quite expensive for the customer in my opinion so I think they will struggle to hook clients. See example below: Photos only 2,000-3,000 sq.ft Customer fee: $249 Snappr fee: $112.05 Photographer fee: $136.95 Virtual Tour only 2,000-3,000 sq.ft Customer fee: $349 Snappr fee: $157.05 Photographer fee: $191.95 Photos & Virtual Tour Combo 2,000-3,000 sq.ft Customer fee: $549 Snappr fee: $197.05 Photographer fee: $301.95 I hope this helps. Lee |
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