Seeking Advice

Decide how and when to raise money. How: friends & family, crowd sourcing, angel investor, strategic partner, or continue to bootstrap and start pushing subscriptions. When: considering this is still my side hustle, I’m about to launch the 3rd release of the minimum viable product (MVP3) and ramp up “real” user base.

The Origin Story

For the past 20 years, I’ve been the self-appointed photographer for all three of my kids sports teams. I love taking action shots and writing stories to capture their games and tournaments. But organizing and sharing those with team parents has always been painful, especially when a team spans 6 years and over 100 events. Apps like TeamSnap and TeamApp are clunky. Apple photos can be shared only with Apple users, alienating Google users. Sending via email/text/WhatsApp is horrific. The best I’ve found is using Google Photos collaborative albums, with album links and stories shared in Google Docs. But that’s still a bad user experience, so virtually no one does that. GreatAlbum will make celebrating and reliving youth sports team events easy and fun!

Venture Description

GreatAlbum is the only app that enables families to celebrate and relive the achievements of their kids on youth sports teams in shared albums that contain media, events, individuals, stories, etc. It’s also the only app that lets users keep their source photos in Apple or Google and yet represent them in shared albums that span those platforms.

Problem

Soccer moms (and dads) take lots of photos of their kids games, with the intent to share them with other family members who weren’t there (like grandparents), and hopefully to relive them in the future. Yet most photos get locked away in Apple or Google Photos vaults and never see the light of day. Soccer moms are too busy and overwhelmed to organize and share them, and there are no apps that make this easy, especially with multiple kids on numerous teams spanning decades.

Solution

GreatAlbum is built on the open-source Drupal content mgmt platform. It comes out of the box with proven content management flexibility and scalability. Its concept of an album includes different media types (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Youtube Videos) and content types (Events, Stories, Individuals, Places, Discussions), such that members of the album can keep their media with trusted services (Apple, Google) and yet import the meta data to auto-organize them into shared events, tag shared Individuals & Places, capture stories and discussions.

Market & Opportunity

60M kids playing youth sports in the US. 200M team “fans” (family & friends) who would like to cheer on those kids/teams. If they all paid $100/yr subscription, then TAM = $20B. If only 10% of potential users would use GreatAlbum, then SAM = $2B. Assuming 70% free users, 20% pay $50/yr and 10% pay $100/yr, then SOM = $400M.

If the global market is 10x US, then the global numbers are:

TAM = $200B, SAM = $20B, SOM = $4B.

Business Model

Subscription business model:

• Free for up to 5 albums and 25,000 media items

• Standard $50/year subscription for up to 10 albums and 50,000 media items

• Unlimited $100/year subscription for unlimited albums & media items

Competition

Apple and Google Photos are obvious, but very clumsy when trying to share media across many events/years. They don’t have shared tagging of individuals, places or events. TeamSnap, TeamApp and related apps are mostly for organizing games across teams and leagues; photo sharing is a “step child” feature. Most of our perceived competitors are in fact potential business partners. GreatAlbum is unique in its approach and designed to integrate (partner) with other apps/services.

Moat/Durability

Network effects are huge. When fans use GreatAlbum for one team, many will likely create Albums for other teams and invite more users to join. That will drive exponential growth. Also, building B2B distribution channels through private sports clubs and private schools, when they sponsor tens of teams at a time and sign-up thousands of user per club/school, will fuel even greater growth.

Team

Erik Britt-Webb, Founder/CEO/visionary has three decades of business and technology leadership experience. He’s an expert in building channel partnerships and epitome of a sports dad and team photographer. Dima Storozhuk, CTO/tech lead, has over a decade of technology expertise in the Drupal technology stack and leading technology teams.

Financial Projection

Within the next two years, achieve 1M users and annualized revenue of $5M. Achieve profitability within 2-3 years.

Marketing Distribution

Customer acquisition strategy has two main pillars:

1. B2C viral adoption – members of Team A create their albums for Teams B-Z and invite new members to join.

2. B2B partnerships – with private sports clubs and private school who sponsor albums for all their teams.

Traction

Started building MVP1 two years ago. About to launch our MVP3. We have 250 registered users, of whom 10-20 are active, with over 50,000 media imported from Google Photos. Erik has 2500 people on his target/waiting list, across 20 teams/families. As soon as MVP3 fully launches, Erik will ramp up those groups to drive viral adoption. Erik will then use his strong personal relationships with two private soccer clubs (Valeo, Juventus) and one private school (Belmont Hill) to cultivate their partnerships.

Additional Information

Incl. 2-min video https://TBD: 2-minute video summary

Erik Britt-Webb, +1-617-899-6023, [email protected]

www.greatalbum.net