Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Startup snapshot: Kenyan entrepreneurs create African-focused stock photo platform

[Bulls n Bears]

Kenya-based AfricanStockPhoto is an stock photography marketplace. Sitati
Kituyi co-founder and CTO, answers our questions.


1. Give us your elevator pitch.


AfricanStockPhoto is a stock image marketplace that features authentic
African imagery, contributed by photographers across the continent.


2. How did you finance your startup?


To date, it’s all bootstrapped from the two co-founders’ savings. Though
having started to generate revenue, we’re hoping to close a round of
investment now.


3. If you were given US$1m to invest in your company now, where would it
go?


Definitely catalogue growth. The most exciting aspect of our business is
working with photographers across the continent to build a rich, diverse
collection of imagery. We’d put that money towards working with talented
studios and freelance photographers to document more day-to-day activities
in the context of their home countries.


4. What risks does your business face?


Pricing is very fluid in the stock media industry; images can be sold for
anything from a few US cents to many hundreds of dollars depending on the
site and content. In this context, it’s really hard to identify a price
point that feels like good value to both our photographers and the end
customer.


5. So far, what has proven to be the most successful form of marketing?


We were featured on Product Hunt, a US tech site that showcases new
startups. During the week in which we were on their homepage, we had a
record number of visitors and image sales. Organically reproducing this
effect hasn’t been easy. But we’ve also had some success with search engine
advertisement and our blog.


6. Describe your most exciting entrepreneurial moment.


Without a doubt, this was our first sale. At the time AfricanStockPhoto was
still a side-project that we hoped to be able to switch to working on
full-time, but that was by no means guaranteed. Then a customer from Malawi
checked out with one of our images (even better, it was an image taken by
Dicky, one of the co-founders). It was a very small moment of validation and
marked the beginning of a long journey, not the end. But if you don’t
celebrate those moments, there is no point being an entrepreneur.


7. Tell us about your biggest mistake, and what have you’ve learnt from it?


We spoke to many people to validate our business idea before diving into
it. Creatives who work with stock imagery every day were all really excited
by our idea, but once it was live we discovered the decision-making dynamics
in many creative agencies that prevent them from being able to sign up to a
new service, and this has meant our sales to agencies have been slower than
we hoped. It turns out that we spoke to a lot of similar-minded people in
the same role, not getting a variety of perspectives. Deliberately seeking
out different perspectives in future is one of the main learnings so far.


8. In addition to your own industry, name one untapped business opportunity
in Africa.


When we work from home it’s always depressing how few healthy, affordable
lunch options are available for delivery. Food delivery services have
largely focused on western fast food, which is generally both unhealthy and
too expensive for regular consumption. I think there’s a huge opportunity to
deliver home-cooked, healthy, traditional African food, with the quality of
service and packaging, reliability, etc. that fast-food services now hav—
howwemadeitinafrica 



Co-founders Sitati Kituyi (left) and Dicky Hokie Junior

 

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