How many people are actually struggling with this pain point - people who want to get better at taking photos or have friends and family who wish they’d up their photography skill?

• We hit the streets and talked to 50 people in a survey. About 72% of them weren’t happy with the photos they take or the photos their partners were taking. They also didn’t have a clue about how to make the pictures better. All they knew was that the photos didn’t look great.

Why did we opt to focus on the consumer market rather than professionals?

• Professional photographers generally don’t need automated customization. They prefer having a set of tools that allows them to handle the customization themselves. On the other hand, everyday folks tend to prefer convenience. They want something that’s custom-tailored for them without the extra effort. That’s where AI shines – it caters to this love for ease and convenience.
• The consumer market holds immense potential. Consider Adobe as an example; their primary user base consists of professionals, and their Creative Cloud generates revenues of approximately $10 billion. Should we target professional photographers with our tool and, for the sake of argument, assume they are all willing to double their expenditure on software, our market size as a productivity tool is unlikely to exceed $10 billion. Contrastingly, targeting consumers presents a broader horizon. By tailoring aesthetics to user preferences and establishing ourselves as a company that deeply understands its users, we can cultivate an ecosystem that opens doors to limitless market expansion – a strategy akin to what Google successfully executed.

So, when would professionals want to use AI?

• When they want to take it easy: For instance, to dodge the mundane, repetitive tasks in photo editing and selecting.
• When they're out of fresh ideas and need inspiration.

Why shooting is supposed to have larger market than editor

• Not everyone likes to edit pictures after taking them, but everyone certainly needs to take a photo to have something to edit.
  • Around 12.4 trillion photos exist in the world, with 750 billion images on the internet, which is a mere 6% of the total number of photos ever taken. Most photos don’t get shared, but since these are on the internet, it’s safe to assume they’re largely shared on social media.
    • The Renfrew Center Foundation survey shows that 50% of social media users edit their photos before posting them.
    • This means that only 3% of all photos are edited, but you must take a photo first, no matter what. This sheds light on why the photography service market is valued at $36.42 billion, a sizeable amount.

And why did we begin with the portrait market?

• Because it is the majority of photography market - Source:
  • There are 71,580 photographers in Canada, and a whopping 75% of them are engaged in portrait photography.
  • Within Canada, school portrait photography comprises 15.3% of the market, personal and group photography 34.7%, and weddings just 5.5% (according to IBIS World).
    • Adding it up, 15.3% + 34.7% * 2 + 5.5% equals 90.2%, which shows that a significant chunk of the market is centered around portraits.