Mentor Interview

Mentor Questions
At the beginning of your career after college what did you see yourself doing?

I thought I might work in the outdoor industry in some capacity. I wasn’t sure what
job or how I just knew that I enjoyed outdoor activities and if I could find a way to
make that into a job I would be very happy.

I know that Aphotofolio is your creation how did this come about?

I was working in New York City and started blogging about the photography
business. One day I mentioned that I was going to be leaving the magazine I was
working at and moving into software and I had some ideas for tools I wanted to
create to help photographers. My current business partner was a reader of the
blog and emailed me to see if I would be interested in working with him. We
decided to form a software business together.

How did living in Durango effect creating your business?

It made it more difficult to manage employees, but because we didn’t have an
office everyone worked out of their homes and it kept our overhead low so we
could be very competitive with established businesses.

How is your business different than others?

We’re a company that sells software that’s stored online and accessed using a
browser. The software is stored online so we don’t have any packaging or
distribution costs. We also only have the costs to manufacture the software once,
each copy we make costs nothing.

What do you do to compete in the now super competitive atmosphere?
1. We listen to our users and incorporate their suggestions into the software as
quickly as we can.
2. We save money by not competing in some areas of business. For example,
many of our competitors include shopping carts in their software, so we don’t
and focus on customers who don’t need a cart.
3. We specialize and go after a niche in the market, so we are the best solution
available for a certain type of customer.
4. We keep our costs low so we are nimble and can react to changes in the
market.
5. We innovate so we are the industry leader in bringing new ideas and products
to the market.