It’s all about patience. Building credibility takes time!
Start-Up: Geofilter Studio
Founder: Chris Schmidt
Located: Winnipeg, Manitoba
What is Geofilter Studio?
To begin with, you may be wondering what a Geofilter is. Well, for any Snapchat user, a geofilter is a graphic overlay that goes over a picture you’ve taken. It is only available in certain locations and can help celebrate different events and occasions. Feel free to check out their website.
How Geofilters came to be.
Chris was running another company and he found that it was getting expensive, so he was looking for other sources of revenue. He happened to come across a video on social media that talked about selling geofilters. He thought he could sell a few geofilters and then jump back to the other company he was working on. He ran the idea by one of his main designers, who was not for the idea…
So, a couple of weeks pass by…
And Chris still thought it was a good idea, so he went onto Kijjji and found a wedding social. This was before there was a name, logo, or website. He called the couple (Jessica and Romeo), who were looking for gifts for their wedding social and told them that he did not have a gift but asked if they were interested in purchasing a geofilter. They did.
Within 4 hours, Chris bought a domain, built the website, and completed the order form. The company was live the next day.
Patience. You likely won’t become big overnight.
After the first successful sale, Chris noted the next 2 months were very slow and they only received 1 to 2 orders per day. Chris was creative and went onto Reddit and tried to drive customers to his website by using multiple accounts. Even though it was slow and there was no sign that this idea would generate any money, Chris was confident that once people found out about geofilters, everyone would want one. He knew this first-hand because every time he went to a customer event, everyone was crazy, excited about them.
Then, over the next 2 years, Geofilter Studio went from having a few employees working a few hours from home after their full-time jobs, to 38 graphic designers working in their own office space. Wow.
Serial Entrepreneurship.
Chris has been running companies his entire life, which has given him lots of opportunities to perfect being a CEO. His entrepreneurial journey started when he was 10 years old. He was cutting his family’s lawn and a neighbor came over and asked him if he was interested in cutting his lawn too. This expanded from there and he also started a tree banding business. All these experiences led to Geofilter Studio—which is also expanding!
Last summer, Geofilter Studio reached a point where Chris wanted to quickly do R&D and see where the company could go. There was no VC money or loans, it was all in-house capital they used to do this. They created things like imessage stickers and mobile games but decided to focus on geofilters and AR objects for Facebook and Snapchat.
Challenges
Chris noted that one of the biggest challenges for his company was to build credibility on the internet, which can be incredibly tough. This is the reason Chris and his team decided to not have a pre-payment requirement before the purchase of an order. Chris wanted to get as many customer orders through the system and talk to as many people, even though it meant potentially designing a geofilter for a 10-year old, who didn’t have a credit card to buy one, or for someone who wasn’t willing to pay for one. Eventually, a corporate client came along, which changed things. Their first corporate client was Carls Jr, who wanted to promote a new hamburger for Western Canada through a geofilter. Chris’s goal was to collect as many logos as possible and put them on their website, to build credibility. This was the first one of many.
They also evolved their pricing strategy over time. They moved from no upfront payment, to a $5 deposit, to a half upfront payment, and then to a full upfront payment when they started working with large clients.
The small team expanded exponentially in 14 months. This also brought its own challenges. Running an 85-person team with managers, directors, departments, workflows is very different from running a 4-person lawn mowing company. As Chris put it “You can no longer just wake up with the goal of finding a way to increase sales. You also have to deal with problems like someone wearing smelly perfume.” Chris noted that they also struggled to keep up with all the orders coming through their system (which crashed everyday). The workforce at Geofilter Studio is also quite young with an average age of 22, so Chris found it important to put the right person in the right role.
Their sales are also 99% international, so selling internationally also brings a whole other layer.
The Geofilter Studio team! Fun fact: from the beginning, all employees have gotten paid!
How strategic decisions are made at Geofilter Studio.
For Chris, making strategic decisions is one of his favorite things to do as part of the company. He said he goes through a process of very meticulous thinking, removes any emotional side to the decision, and makes sure that nothing influences the decision. He prefers to rely on data and facts. For example, he would much rather build a website in 4 hours and spend the next 4 months optimizing it based on the users needs, instead of taking 4 months to build a “perfect” website and then launching it. Chris also likes to innovate, optimize and to take something and translate it into dollars.
Living the life of a CEO of a start-up.
First of all, 120-hour weeks is normal and when I spoke to Chris, he said “Last night at 12:30 I was designing a geofilter for a client because the rest of my team was asleep. So, in that sense, I am a unique CEO because I’m in it. I don’t design as much anymore as I am doing fun legal stuff,” but Chris is still involved with all the aspects of the business and through this, he has really gotten to know the customers. He works long hours and attributes his perseverance to his Dad, who is a doctor that also works long hours.
Mentors are great, but you don’t have to make it formal.
For Chris, he’s never had a mentor and he has not been part of the start-up community in Winnipeg, but he has listened to tons of podcasts and considers Gary Vaynerchuk his biggest influence.
Get to know Chris and what makes him nerdy + other facts!
Chris…
...works in the office from about 9 to 7 or 8 everyday and goes home and does another full day of work until around 4am. He then gets 4 or 5 hours of sleep.
... likes to run half-marathons for fun! (Another runner!!)
...can do corporate tax, coding, business, sales, and marketing…and has never taken a business course!
...didn’t leave his room for 2 months and watched the entire series of “How I met your mother” from Season 1 to the end. And by the end, he knew how to build a website and the back-end system.
...is motivated by wanting to build something significant and wanting to build a community people enjoy coming to every day where they share the same goal.
Advice for any entrepreneurs-to-be.
Chris noted that it is important to have some domain of knowledge in the area you are trying to get into. Be self aware and really understand what you are and are not good at and find employees that complement you. Do not be afraid of working long hours and be incredibly persistent. And know you are probably not going to “make it” in a week. Remember to provide value in your company, whether it is a good or a service, and really solve a problem. And most importantly, love what you do! Be excited for Mondays!
For Geofilter Studio, Chris noted that they have probably accomplished what a normal company does in 20 years in just 2 years and it is just the beginning. Please check-out all the interesting things Chris and his team is working on! They also have a blog. 😊 If you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach-out!
