PhotoSweep: from company to community with desarrollo

Sara and Jeremy Snyder shared a passion for photography and travel that frequently led them to the same problem: they had no easy way to get prints of the photos they took on their trips without going through the tedious process of selecting and printing photos in-store. They needed a simple way to sweep their photos from their phones to their front doors, and they created PhotoSweep as the answer. 

They developed a business plan and rolled out their product while in school, and since then PhotoSweep has grown to help them share photos from all their special occasions with friends and family. The process is is simple. PhotoSweep asks for a mailing address and credit card information. Then the user selects how often they would like photos printed. Finally, they select photos to be printed, and hit "Done." After the first time, the only step is the last one, and people can have prints of their photos mailed to their door as often as they like. Add the mailing addresses of additional recipients and grandparents and friends can have pictures of birthdays, holidays, music festivals, and nights out on the town without the time consuming chore of using an in-store printing service. "Everyone loves getting pictures in the mail!" Sara and Jeremy said in an interview.  Their vision is that people can have refrigerators covered in beautiful, current pictures of loved ones.

Sara and Jeremy want PhotoSweep to help more people enjoy their photos, and have come to desarrollo to help them face certain challenges. The company was renting an office before they joined Flock #2, and immediately benefited from desarrollo's free office space, cutting an estimated 95% of their overhead costs, and allowing them otherwise impossible flexibility to respond to marketing needs. "Our main challenges currently are monetary," they said. "As for future challenges, growing our customer base as wide as possible, marketing and brand awareness are at the top of our list." The shared space and resources at desarrollo help them to function at a lower cost during these nascent stages of the business, but more importantly, desarrollo offers them guidance from experienced mentors and other entrepreneurs and startups on the company's journey to become people's first choice for printing photos. Jeremy said that the mentors will listen to his ideas, point out what they thought was good about them and supplement that with ideas of their own. This is especially helpful for the company as they begin to shift their focus toward fundraising, and are mapping out the direction those funds will take them, including diversifying the options available for print size, print quality, and other aspects of the product.  Desarrollo provides Sara and Jeremy with unique opportunities to connect with the local entrepreneur community through its network of mentors, and they hope that the help they receive will extend far beyond their six-month enrollment in the desarollo's PhxFlight program through continued collaboration and cooperation. 

Companies like PhotoSweep contribute to the growing number of success stories coming out of Arizona's entrepreneur community, and with desarrollo's help are becoming the type of company that can give back to the community that supports it. 

To learn more about PhotoSweep, visit their website at http://photosweep.com/

Want to learn more about desarrollo? Watch this inspiring and informative video!

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About desarrollo [de-sar-roy’-yo]

desarrollo™ is a community initiative to support Arizona entrepreneurs of any stage or size. We look to develop a community of collaboration, growth, knowledge and inspiration to develop Arizona into the premier destination for entrepreneurs.... And Do It in Less Than Five Years! For more information, visit www.desarrollodeaz.org

desarrollo [de-sar-roy’-yo] – Spanish for development

Read some of the great things, others have to say about us:
AZ Tech Beat - http://aztechbeat.com/2013/06/desarrollo-not-your-typical-incubator-launches-today/

Phoenix Business Journal - http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/print-edition/2013/07/05/new-incubator-aims-to-up-ante-for.html

Storynamics: How collaboration turned a dream into reality

Miguel Lopez, the founder and CEO of Storynamics, says that when he first started this company, his dream was to make educational graphic novels to reach out to underserved communities in America. Storynamics' comics use visuals, color and story to "save the day" for many people in America who are living in poverty and illiteracy by presenting healthcare information to them in an accessible way. Storynamics' unique format can increase willingness to read, comprehension, retention and readership by 74% and higher, educating people in households with low health literacy about making good healthcare choices.

When Lopez first pitched his idea to companies, he cast a wide net over a broad market, and the response was low. He knew he needed to narrow his focus to the people who really needed his product, and he came to desarrollo for help. The collaboration and workspace he found at desarrollo allowed him to bounce his ideas and hypotheses off of other startups facing similar problems, and eventually to refocus his efforts on healthcare, where there was a real need to reach out to people who had little knowledge about managing their health. Desarrollo allowed him to go through the learning process necessary to identify where there was a real need for Storynamics. The company now serves the population that needs it by focusing on pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and local government entities as its main customers. 

Collaboration and community at desarrollo helped Storynamics to reach underserved communities with information about a wide range of healthcare needs, from the challenges children with diabetes face at school testing their blood sugar levels, to the importance of adults living an active lifestyle. Storynamics still uses desarrollo's space for the collaborative atmosphere, and pays it forward by helping the other startups to overcome their own challenges. 

Storynamics is an example of the power of community to transform a dream from a great idea into a viable, sustainable company.

Check out the Storynamics website! 

About desarrollo [de-sar-rol’-lyo]

www.desarrollodeaz.org

 

desarrollo, is a community initiative to support Arizona entrepreneurs of any stage or size. We look to develop a community of collaboration, growth, knowledge and inspiration to develop Arizona into a premier destination for entrepreneurs.... And Do It in Less Than Five Years!

For more information, visit www.desarrollodeaz.org

desarrollo [de-sar-rol’-lyo] – Spanish for development

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