Summary

We are now living in the era of retouching - more and more people, especially young
females, started to touch up their photos. However, many of them are suffering from the
dull group photo editing process. In this paper, we will in-depth discuss the current trend
and pain of our target client, and present our solution: WePS - an application that allows
multiple people to retouch their group photo simultaneously. The analysis of market size,
competition, financial and team plan will also be discussed.

Problem

Nowadays, young females are one of the biggest demographic group of social media users.
According to Springfest research, 52% of Facebook user are female, while 88% of users are
18-29 years old; 58% of Instagram users are female, with 59% are 18-29 years old
(Spredfest, 2018). Pretty selfies, travel photos, party photos, foodie photos and more kinds
of daily life photos are shared on social media platforms. As the photos are posted to the
public, many young females have growing concerns about their appearances on photos.
Sometimes driven by vanity, the quality of photos that the young girls share can affect their
self-confidence and happiness. Young females started to touch-up their faces and bodies on
their photos using smartphone applications, it is convenient and able to make any kind of
adjustment on the photos.

At the same time, people take more and more group photos at various parties and events,
many girls start to retouch group photo as well. However, photo touch-up is not as
convenient and smooth when it comes to group photos - the currently available apps do not
allow people to edit their photo at the same time. So the current workaround is: one person
edit the photo then send to the next person to edit it. By the end of the last person done
editing, someone probably needs more adjustment. By the time everyone is happy with
their appearance on the photo, the time has been wasted, and the photo quality just
dropped from HD to LD as the photo has been shared/edited again and again. Based on
personal experience and observations, it takes up to hours, even days, to finish editing a
group photo where everyone is happy to post it.
Target Market

The target market of WePS is young females (14-30 years old) who are photo-editing
application users, and often engage in group photos.

Appendix A is the sketch of our customer archetype of the app: Melody, an early 20 years
old university student who is an active Instagram user. She is very into editing/ touching up
photos. She takes photos in social events and posts to gain followers and likes. Also, she
takes and shares fashion/ daily life on Instagram and has 2000+ followers. She likes to
attend events to socialize, such as girls parties. She wants to gain likes and followers and
one day become an online celebrity. Therefore, she wants to look good and post good
looking group photos on social media and wants other people to post her edited pretty
photos.

Solution

The problem can be solved by creating a photo editing app that includes a function to
enables multiple people to edit photos at the same time. Similar concept to Google docs,
WePS can connect others’ accounts. Appendix C shows the MVP of the app. After one
person uploads the original photo on to the app, he/she can select to share with everyone
else in the group photo. Having the share link, people in the group can edit simultaneously.
When one person finishes editing, the screen will show a green light on the person’s name.
This function allows people to know when the photo is finished editing so that people can
post group photos that everyone in it is happy with. The product has a network effect - the
more people downloading our app, the more convenient for people to edit group photo.
Besides these main features, WePS can also take photos/ videos and edit by yourself like
general photo editing apps. When choosing the best photo to edit, WePS can also choose
from the video that has the best moment of you. We want our customer to feel
convenience when using WePS; hence, WePS can also share it to every social media
platform. We aim to create a photo editing app that solves different pains of the photo
retouching process.
Value Propositions
➔WePS can effectively reduce the time spent on group photo editing to only a fraction of
the original time spent
➔WePS maintains the original photo quality even after group photo editing

➔WePS can help to create a better group photo memory

➔Users can become less worried and more self-confidence about their group photos

Hypothesis & Validation

Based on our value propositions, the main hypotheses that we want to prove are the
following:
a. Young females are concerned with their appearance on their photos.
b. Young females would like to touch up their photos before sharing with people.
c. Young females think group photo editing process is too time-consuming.
d. The current workaround and what competitors are providing is not enough for the
young females to be satisfied with their group photo editing experiences.

Before the interviews, we decided that a more than 75% positive feedback gives us a pass
for validation of hypothesis. 12 Asian females, aged from 16 to 27, were interviewed in
Vancouver, mainly on the UBC Campus. After the interviews, we validated all of the
hypotheses at different levels: hypothesis a at a 100% level, hypothesis b at a 83% level,
and hypothesis c and d at 75% level. Therefore, all hypotheses were successfully validated.
However, considering the small sample size as a limit, we think a larger scale interview
process is necessary in the future.
Market Size

Appendix B shows the market size of the proposed app, WePS. The following is the
breakdown of the calculation.

TAM - We used Meitu’s global monthly active users (117,100,000 people according to Meitu
Inc.) as estimated TAM as Meitu is a very successful photo retouching app and we have a
similar target market.then multiply by our price ($12/year). The total amount is
$1,405,200,000, which is round down to roughly $1 Billion/year.

SAM - According to Sensortower, Meitu’s Apple Store and Google Play reached
approximately 2 million downloads in December 2018. Knowing the latest monthly
downloads of our competitor enables our venture to estimate WePS business model’s
possibility. By multiply with $12/ year, WePS’s SAM is $24 million/ year.

SOM - Sensortower also reported that Facetune app (priced at $5.99), which is also a very
successful photo retouching app, have total 105,000 downloads on December 2018.
Multiply by $12/year equal $1,210,000. We consider that not every one of them takes group
photos and our price is higher, so we can only reach less than that in the next two years;
therefore, we round down the SOM to be roughly $1 million /year.
Competition

Time Consuming Group Self-confidence over High Definition

Photo Retouching Group Photos Group Photos

WePS (Our Venture) 👍👍👍 👍👍👍 👍👍👍

Current Workaround - 👎👎👎 👍👍 👎👎👎

one by one editing

Meitu 👎👎👎 👍👍👍 👎

Facetune 👎👎👎 👍👍👍 👎

Ulike 👍👍 👍👍 👎👎

The competitors that we are presenting here are popular photo touch up applications and
camera application that has group touch up functions. They are all mentioned during our
interview process and are quite popular among young females. As mentioned previously,
the current workaround is can increase young females’ self-confidence to a certain extent,
but it is very time and photo quality consuming. Meitu and Facetune, the biggest photo
retouching applications, are quite similar. They do not allow people to retouch their photo
at the same time, that is where WePS comes in handy. Ulike is a camera app with automatic
touch up, it has automatic group touch up feature, but it does not allow each person to
personalize the touch-up, this is where WePS good at. Also, WePS will aim to keep high
photo quality, which is where the competitors are lacking in group photo editing.

Financials

Based on the estimated calculation we made on the Basic Financial Model (monthly cash
flow projection in Appendix D, also with notes explaining the main focus of the period), we
think it would be reasonable for us to have a $50,000 starting cash to support the R&D,
marketing and daily operation of our company. At 15 month, we expect our EBITDA to
become positive of $1,500 and continue to grow. Within the first 16 months, the break-even
is very hard to occur. However, if we consider it in a fairly optimistic way, where we start to
gain users and subscriptions starting from month 14, then we can see that the break-even
point will not be too far away from us. If we only look at the first year, where we focus on
app development and customer study and have not done a real release of the app, the
monthly burn rate would be $3,568, which is pretty high, but normal at the starting stage of
a start-up.

Team

Founders Idea creators and charismatic leaders.

Engineers R&D people, who are technical development and support, should be expert in
photo-retouching technology.

Finance Make sure there is enough funding by performing pitches to investors, at the
beginning phase, founders should take charge of finding investors.

Marketing Specialist in digital marketing and bringing more users by different marketing
campaigns.

Seagull Advisors We need different types of advisors in different stages, which include
customer, industry, technical, business, and sales/ marketing.

Next Steps

Based on the positive in-person interview results where all hypotheses got validated, we
definitely think it is worthy to investigate deeper into the idea. For the very first step, we
will need to continue with the customer discovery study by expanding the interview range
to western young females, even males. From that, we can find some customer and industry
type advisors to discuss the idea and listen to their advice about how to proceed. For
example, to decide to do more personal interviews, focus groups or surveys. After that, if
we think it is still a great opportunity, we can upgrade our MVP and start to pitch to FFF for
first round fundraising.
References
Cosslett, R. L. (2016, September 08). Thinner, smoother, better: In the era of retouching,
that's what girls have to be | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. Retrieved February 1, 2019,
from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/08/thinner-retouchin
g-girls-image-manipulation-women

Meitu Inc. (2018, March). ANNUAL RESULTS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED
DECEMBER 31, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from
https://corp.meitu.com/resource/annc/20180326/2017 Annual Results.pdf

Sensortower. (n.d.). Meitu – Beauty Cam, Easy Photo Editor - Revenue & Download
estimates - Google Play Store - US. Retrieved from
https://sensortower.com/android/US/publisher/app/appName/com.mt.mtxx.mtxx/r
eview-history?selected_tab=breakdown

Similarweb. (2019, January 20). Mobile App Ranking. Retrieved from

https://www.similarweb.com/apps/trends/apple/store-rank/ca/photo-and-
video/top- free/iPhone

Smith, C. (2018, December 9). 20 Interesting Meitu Statistics and Facts. Retrieved from
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/meitu-statistics-and-facts/

Spredfast. (2018). The 2018 Social Audience Guide. Retrieved from

https://www.spredfast.com/social-media-tips/social-media-demographics-current
Appendices

Appendix A. Melody, the Customer Archetype Appendix B. Market Size Graphic

Appendix C. MVP of WePS

Appendix D. Basic Finance Model