The Start Zone

Startup Interviews and other Digital issues

  • Home
  • Subscribe
  • Books
  • About

Startup Highlight – Peecho

June 10, 2014 by Pedro Mendes Leave a Comment

750_peechoAt a time when the print world is struggling, Peecho proposes to bring it back, turning your digital assets into physical ones. I talked to their CTO, Sander Nagtegaal.

In a nutshell, what is Peecho and how did the idea come about?
We offer simple tools to connect your website or app to a global network of professional print facilities. This allows you to offer your digital photos, magazines or publications as physical products, made world-wide. Our main product is a really simple print button. As a digital publisher, you can embed this button in your website to sell your digital content as luxury print products, like books, magazines and wall decoration.

As one of very few services in the world, we can offer a single pricing model across the globe, without demanding a minimum order volume. So, you can start with a single print, and that’s fine. We can do this because our service gives you access to a large cloud print network – currently connecting to 35 big facilities in Europe and the US. So, there is no investment or financial risk, because we take care of that. You can just start.

The idea behind our service is the following. We believe that print will disappear as a primary means of communication. Digital communication will take over completely. However, some of that digital information will have special meaning to some of us. In those occasions, there will be a desire to have a physical artefact that speaks to the importance of that particular content. It becomes a keepsake. So, what will remain is a much smaller market for on demand production of luxury prints, based on digital content. And that’s where we come in.

So, Peecho’s mission is to become the primary infrastructure for the transformation of digital information into other forms, which are only produced when and where needed: with respect for the planet.

Who can benefit from your service?
In general, we target owners of valuable digital content. Artists and museums can use us to bring their art into many living rooms, digital magazine publishers use us to publish glossy magazines even for niche publications, and corporations finally take the plunge to “digital first” once they know they can still offer a printed version of their reports using our print button. Examples of well-known customers are Rijksmuseum, Issuu or Deloitte – but the long tail of small publishers and start-ups is equally important to us.

Do you see differences in a Europe based startup when compared to a US based one?
Well, I think the European start-up scene has evolved greatly in the past few years. For example, in Amsterdam, there is a thriving community of start-ups, partly powered by incubators like Rockstart. There is still a big difference in the investments that are made, though: European VC’s tend to be a bit more conservative.

peecho_sWhat do you wish you’d have known when you first started?
There are a lot of things that I know now that I did not know then. However, I am not so sure it would have been useful to know all these lessons up-front. I think it is hugely important to treasure a form of naivety – to consistently underestimate things and be hugely optimistic can be an advantage. It adds to your resilience. Keep on believing that you will change the world, and maybe some day you will.

A simple lesson though that would have helped is not to focus on technology that much. As a software architect, I have the tendency to want to be prepared. So, first we created a great cloud architecture and only after that we really shifted focus to user experience. In hindsight, we should have done that the other way around.

A more successful tactic of us is to limit ourselves with certain rules. Limitations make you more creative. Rules that worked out great are things like “only hire people better than yourself” and “it is better to be able fix things quickly than to try to be right all the time”. Sometimes, we create a rule that doesn’t work, though, like “You have to do 50 push-ups before you can add a user story to the backlog”. This just resulted in really fit product owners.

What other startup is on your radar and why?
In that case, I will take the opportunity to plug some friends here!

One of the start-ups that is connected to our platform is Resnap. They built a system that allows people to create a social media photo book in under a minute. It is a great opportunity to create a more tangible memory of that part of your life. Cool stuff.

Another mention could be 3dhubs. They embraced a similar model like we do, but rather than focusing on large factory-like production facilities, they have created a huge network of home 3D printers that you can access through their website. They are growing like mad.

Find out more about Peecho at http://www.peecho.com

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

Related posts:

  1. Startup Highlight – Shipizy
  2. Startup Highlight – Zomato
  3. Startup Highlight: CrowdProcess
  4. Startup Highlight: BlaBlaCar

Filed Under: Interviews, Startups

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Connect

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Subscribe

Search

Categories

  • Book reviews
  • Digital
  • Interviews
  • Pedro's Notes
  • Recommended Links
  • Startups
  • Tech Conferences

© Copyright Pedro Mendes · All Rights Reserved · Powered by WordPress