#VLeadersTech: Meet Eugenia Balysheva of Dotphoton
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On Saturday Eugenia Balysheva of Dotphoton will travel to Silicon Valley with Venture Leaders Technology to meet key entrepreneurs and investors. Here we find out a little about his motivation for applying to the program.
Why do you choose Silicon Valley as your business development destination?It is not a secret that Silicon Valley represents a very particular mindset of visionary innovation. And it is hard to bypass it for any tech startup with global ambitions. Since we believe that Dotphoton’s technology can change the way that professionals deal with imaging around the globe, we felt it was an important step to present Dotphoton’s products and services in the Valley.
What do you want to achieve from the trip?
We will be glad to establish interesting collaborations and receive feedback from investors and technology leaders. Since we are planning a fundraising round in 2018 it would be valuable to meet investors who share our vision and would like to join Dotphoton in our journey.
Why is Venture Leaders TECH beneficial for your company?
We know Venturelab’s initiatives quite well now and particularly appreciate the business knowledge and inspiration they bring. We believe that participation in this Venture Leaders program will help our early stage company to learn more about business, focus on the right markets and products and grow Dotphoton faster.
What is pushing you towards international expansion?
Dotphoton’s technology has a truly global application. Our ambition is to create the very first universal RAW image format combining the practicality of today’s lossy formats with the great quality of RAW. This is why we need to think big and have been working on international collaborations since the very beginning.
What do you foresee as the largest hurdles towards expansion into Silicon Valley?
The thickest wall to break is lack of trust towards compression within the professional community. This is why, besides showing the actual compression results, Dotphoton has introduced a unique feature of scientific quality guarantee. And this is why we are working on establishing contacts with key opinion leaders in the imaging market. We believe that, in addition to the great technology we already have, such contacts will allow us to break this wall.
What makes you most nervous or excited about the trip?
Dotphoton has been out of stealth mode since September 2017, and up to now we have received very positive feedback from a small circle of industry leaders. However, presenting our products and technology to a wider audience is at the same time exciting and challenging.
You recently launched your first product, what lesson have you learned from that?
When launching the Dotphoton Cam app, we wanted to approach all imaging professionals, so, we had to create a product for the most widespread camera in the world. Besides getting better technically, the iPhone is appealing in its accessibility: there is this saying that the best camera is the one you have with you, and it is hard to beat an iPhone from this point of view. Today even professional photographers consider the iPhone as a powerful photographic tool and by releasing the Dotphoton app we wanted to make this tool even more powerful and user-friendly at the same time. We only released the app recently, and I think the main lessons are still to be learned. At the moment we are anxious to see whether the users will accept and appreciate our first product. Already during market research and beta testing, we learned about the importance of visual presentation and a pleasant user experience. We had underestimated how difficult it is to turn a scientific idea into something fun and convenient. It did not take too long to build a first prototype that could take and compress raw photos, but to make it look and feel right was a long procedure requiring a joint effort from the whole team. It will be great to receive some feedback and see if the app is as handy and useful as we think.
Read about the Startup Champions kick-off event and don't forget to follow the trip on Twitter using the hashtag #VLeadersTech
Venture Leaders Technology is sponsored by Rothschild Bank, Kellerhals Carrard, digitalswitzerland, Canton de Vaud, EPF Lausanne, ETH Zürich, Gebert Rüf Stiftung, Swissnex San Francisco, Swisscom Ventures and DPD. The Startup Champions event was organized in conjunction with Neo Network. Venturelab is sponsored by BKW, Swiss Prime Site and Swisscom.
