SmartFrame CEO Rob Sewell discusses his journey as an entrepreneur, and shares some lessons learned from the evolution of SmartFrame, on the Advertising Week Great Minds podcast.
You can listen to the podcast in full or read our overview below.
Starting out: Entrepreneurship from an early age
In case you didn’t know, Rob has founded multiple companies in different industries over the years.
From a weekly club night in Greenwich, London in the ‘90s to nationwide health and wellbeing businesses in the 2000s, his determination is clear to see.
Scheckner details how the “skills we pick up at such a young age stay with you throughout your life,” and honing in on that determination from early on helps build business leaders.
Rob agreed, saying that “learning the hard way, taking the knocks, and adapting quickly” helped him develop the grit that’s needed to run businesses.
“Don’t get me wrong – there were lots of lessons learned and lots of mistakes, but that’s the nature of business. If you’ve got the right mindset, any failure is just a stepping stone. And as long as you fail quickly, and learn from those mistakes, you will eventually find the path to success.”
SmartFrame’s origin story
After a brief conversation about other endeavors, Scheckner asked how Rob initially came across SmartFrame, which was then called PixelRights.
Rob explained: “The starting point for me was when the team pointed out that the first photo on the internet was published in 1992 – and, despite the internet rapidly evolving since then, we still publish in the same file format and allow the misuse of images. How can that be?”
“I recognized quickly it was an incredibly talented team with great designers and developers and that they were creating something that was truly innovative to help prevent image theft.”
As for understanding product–market fit, Rob explains after many conversations with photographers and image agencies, he and the team realized that many were making their most profit from suing publishers that used one of their images without the appropriate license.
Suing potential customers is not a sustainable business model. So, after some brainstorming, SmartFrame evolved into more than just a means of asset protection, but also a new revenue stream through in-image advertising.
Scheckner describes the image industry as “Napster” whereby people are sharing with next to no consequence. Rob highlights the value of advertising to streaming platforms already known today.
“Much like YouTube and Spotify, we wanted to understand how we can pre-roll advertising onto SmartFrame image content, and through contextual targeting, we could help create a more sustainable ecosystem for all stakeholders,” said Rob.
For context, stock photography is a declining $4bn industry. Contextual advertising, given the demise of the third-party cookie, was worth $178bn in 2021 and is estimated to reach $376bn in 2027. And this is where SmartFrame sits.
Rob continued: “What SmartFrame is trying to achieve is to change the way you monetize assets. Instead of making money through licensing agreements, we monetize the audience consuming the asset.”
Tune into the rest of the podcast to hear more about how SmartFrame plans to disrupt the sports industry and what the future holds for the company.
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