...just needed to bump this: mainly because I clicked over to PICR to see how they were doing. The site actually got up and running last year. It had photographers on there and everything.
In November last year PICR got featured on Fstoppers: I commented on their post and had a "bit of a go" with one of PICR's staff members who posted in their defence.
https://fstoppers.com …hotography-business-97193
Mr Hoffman said "we'll be in NZ in about 14-18 months." Have a read of the comments: they are hilarious.
Well this is what PICR looks like at the moment: they are in the process of being "re-imagined."
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© banquetbear [SHARE LINK] THIS IS A LOW QUALITY PREVIEW. Please log in to see the good quality stuff. Curious as to what had happened, I clicked over to the blog to look at the latest update. Of course, PICR being PICR, I had to scroll right down the blog page to find the "company announcement" because the site keeps posting vacuous blog posts (because SEO!!!) even though the company is completely starting again.
http://blog.picr.com/Here is what is happening:
http://blog.picr.com …iew-whats-happening-picr/https://medium.com …f-d3c392536eda#.uggam1e7mhttp://blog.picr.com/vague-explanation/The last couple of months were challenging and at times, a little emotional for everyone at Picr. Why? Well, first we had a hard time finding product market fit for the Picr platform’s clients. We spent thousands of dollars on marketing and got almost nothing in exchange. Second, we had to make a decision to lay off half of the team.
This is utterly infuriating for me. I don't care what happens to the CEO. He deserves what he gets. He's done this before. And he is going to do it again.
But I feel for the staff. When you burn through cash at the rates this business was burning it you eventually run out of cash.
And the thing is: this was entirely predictable. In fact, we did predict it, a year ago, in this very thread. On his personal blog, the founder said this:
"While we somewhat nailed it with one side of the platform, we completely failed at our other side — the clients."
Again: entirely predictable. As I said directly to Scott Hoffman in the comments section:
"You've spoken to plenty of photographers and you've got 20,000 "signed up". But how many consumers are lining up, desperate for a service that will help them connect to photographers? How many consumers have you signed up? What is your plan to compete with "wedding photographer portland" pasted into a google search?"
And so they are going to "pivot" again. (The CEO loves the word pivot.)
So we decided to make a pivot that will affect our strategy and part of the product; we are switching to one-sided product. We had some success with the photographers and have lots of them on board. PICR is going to be a toolset for photographers. We believe that current model and workflow for photographers in the photography industry is broken and too complicated. Photographers use tons of different subscription services just to serve a single client. This approach is nonsense.
Nothing in the industry is "broken." The smart businessman are getting clients and making money. I use several different subscription services in my workflow. And that is because we all have our own, highly personal workflows, and trying to get every photographer to work in the same exact way is a nonsense approach. PICR keeps trying to fix things that aren't broken.
So PICR was never marketed to clients at all, just photographers. And PICR failed because it never got any clients. And their solution is not to market to clients at all. So the "pivot" will be to change the business that only markets to photographers. But their is a slight flaw in their pivot:
Our product will be completely free for life to all photographers who will sign up during our beta period. It will almost totally remove bandwidth and storage caps. I’m going to share more about the product in my future posts.
Incredible. It is hard to imagine that this company actually really exists. PICR is burning through cash, there is no plan to stop the burn or a plan to start making cash. Instead: they are going to have a beta period where everyone who signs up gets free membership, with no virtually no bandwidth or storage caps. PICR is always going to have a customer base that uses all of its products with no caps or restrictions for free. This is worse than their "six months free to all photographers who sign up by this date" (this was bad because it meant that for SIX MONTHS PICR HAD NO CASH COMING INTO THE BUSINESS at a time that it desperately needed cash.)
Hint to PICR: when you have 20,000 people signed up to want to use your services: offering "free lifetime membership" is absolutely the worst thing you can do. You don't need to "attract" these potential customers. They are already there. Start selling already.
When this all started they had 22 staff. Now they have nine. And the CEO has had to reluctantly step up to the plate and take over the "blogging duties." He should have been blogging from the start.
So where too from here for PICR?
We have set a goal: to launch the first version of our new product by the end of this September. That’s less than two months away. This is much more than simply launching a product. We have to launch a product that you love.
Oh. 
And I missed out on the free T-shirt as well.
