Janus Klok Matthesen, Pixelz: E-commerce image optimization, AI-generated assets, and building creative communities

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom podcast. We have Janus Clark Matison with us today. He is co-founder and CTO at Pixels uh up in Denmark. I'm in Mexico in Wajaka, Mexico. And this podcast is brought to you by topleads. Agency. If you are a SAS and need some help with your cold email, uh you can hit us up at tople.agy. We're a specialized uh B2B SAS agency for your cold email.

So Janice, welcome to the podcast. Tell me a bit more about yourself and what you're up to nowadays. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're you're right. My name is Yanos. I'm 49 years old. I've been doing uh startups since uh late 1990s. So uh 25 26 years now uh working in startups and creating startups. And uh the the most recent is well it's uh it's back from 2011 and it's pixels where I'm the a co-founder and and the CTO.

Uh yeah and um before that I did I think I was involved in 10 or 12 different startups in in the years leading up to that. Uh and one of the major ones was also the reason why we we created pixels. Which one was your most uh interesting or most successful startup yet? Yeah, that that has to be Pixels where I am right now. Uh in pixels we we got uh several investments during the the early days and uh back in uh 2021 we got a private equity fund in uh joining the company and today we are owned by this private equity dies from uh from Sweden and uh and then the management team and also we are the we are by far the biggest startup I've been a part of creating

and and also the one with the with the most clients and and so on. Very interesting. And yeah, tell us a bit more about uh pixels itself uh what does it do and why do you feel there's a product market fit there? Yeah. Yeah. So basically the the story goes that back uh before pixels we uh we were created a a a e-commerce uh platform and we were creating all these uh web shops for for our clients.

We had a very very gifted uh designer and whenever she made a design for a web shop we would always sell that web shop to our clients and then we would connect all their systems get all the the products online and so on. And very often the clients would come back and say, "Ah, it's not as nice as the design you showed us." And then basically we could show them that well the only thing that changed is we put in your own data, your own images.

And back in that was in like 2010 and back in those days the images did not look great. And that was basically the the kickoff for us uh starting pixels where we help companies optimize their uh images and videos for for e-commerce. And we do this at a very high scale and very consistently and with a with a high quality um mostly within the apparel and fashion business and and working with brands all over the globe.

And yeah, tell me about these AI models. Um are these your AI models or they are there real humans? Well uh we we work with both. uh there's there's a lot happening in the business right now and uh one of the big moves that we're seeing is is that AI models is moving in as part of uh of the of the whole business and we are also creating all kinds of products around this uh where where basically we see a tendency where the the whole uh I don't think the whole market but

a big chunk of the market will move in a direction where it's fully digital where uh a lot of the assets will be created uh by AI. We started our we have an AI team and we started that actually I think it's now seven years ago. Uh so uh way before this uh wave of uh AI came in, our first everything we did in the beginning was all about uh optimizing this uh this production uh engine you could say uh to produce all these assets at the high quality and very fast and so on.

And then uh recently uh in the last couple of years we started experimenting with with all these AI generated assets as well. And uh it it's exciting times, but also I think everyone is trying to find the the exact match. We we know how we did all the old stuff, us and our clients. We know how uh how studios work. We know uh how to create value for studios and so on.

I think everyone, all our clients, all the studios are right now trying to figure out how do we do this in a in a digital way and how do we do it in in the right way and still you know sending the right signal about our products and and uh and helping our clients uh buy these uh products in the end you could say. And what do you say to people that uh say that you're replacing models like uh what what jobs will these people have?

Yeah, of of course that is a real challenge, right? I I I also I have a team of 40 developers uh that I run. Uh they ask me the same questions all the time. Uh because of course I I today I just been uh playing around with Gemini CLI and uh building apps and stuff and and it's it's pretty amazing what AI can do, right? And I think of course for some of some jobs, of course it will displace those jobs.

Of course there will be changes happening. Um I think part of what we seeing right now and what what we are very involved in is uh what we call digital twins. Uh and in those situations is actually real models uh being digitized and and also being paid. They they they of course don't travel the globe as much as uh as they would if they didn't have the digital version.

But on the other hand, suddenly they can do maybe 10 different shoots in the same day digitally. Um and and I think what we're seeing is that a lot of companies also because of all the legal uh aspects of everything because you want a certain you know you want a a spokesperson for your brand often, right? And and within all of that we I think humans connect to humans, right?

And and we want real humans to a certain degree. Uh, so I definitely think there will be a space for for models in the future as well. Um, if it will be the same size of space, I'm not sure. I I think some will be displaced. I think you're right about that. And what's the average consumption per month of a client of yours? Because it's like per usage, right?

Which is pretty cool as well. Um what does a brand like uh Aldo or AS6 what do they consume on your platform Vermont? Yeah I we we we we have different tiers of clients. So we have uh the the very small clients who we call solo clients. Uh then we have what we call our pro uh segment. The pro segment starts anywhere, I would say a pro client would probably be consuming anywhere from $1,000 to maybe $25,000 a month uh with us.

Um and then we have uh oh, sorry, I said a month, I meant uh a year. Uh and then we have our enterprise clients and they they go all the way up to yeah, several hundred of thousands of dollars. Um so uh so it varies quite a lot. And why doesn't Canva do that? Uh would they be a potentially good partner for you or they potentially acquire you one day?

Who who did you mention? Canva. Yeah. Uh I guess we could uh I I think for most of our clients um the need is different. I I think what what we have done is is basically built this workflow engine that integrates tech and humans very closely. I think u I'm not an expert on Canva but as far as I know they would they are building a tool that they want the end user to use you could say.

uh for us with a lot of our clients we are handling maybe thousands of images uh hundreds of videos every day uh and and delivering we need to deliver them back within hours not days. So at that scope I think we are a bit different because we have that hybrid solution where we connect we have we have a mix of humans and uh the technology but who knows certainly we we I could see uh I could see a use case uh with a company like Canva and uh I'm sure we would love to talk to them about being acquired.

So yeah definitely and you've been running that company for almost like 14 years now. It has grown to a pretty decent size. what's your thinking when it comes to raising some more money being profitable and yeah even uh one day having an exit. Yeah. Yeah. So we have been profitable for some years now. Uh so uh so that's that's where we are. Um I think the the the longer term strategy now we we are mainly owned by this private equity.

Uh and when you are owned by private equity, you know you're in a fund and and at some point that fund need to uh cash out, right? So uh we know that we are going to be sold at at at some point within I would say anywhere from now to the next five, seven years something like that. Um so so we know that will happen before that happens. uh definitely our goal is of course to maximize the the value of the company before that and I think the way we we will do that is by growing uh and I think uh that growth will be of course uh natural growth is is part of it but I I'm also uh I think we will also be be looking into mergers and acquisitions at some point.

Interesting. And what's the story behind that uh private equity fund approaching you and investing into you? What was the thesis logic behind that? Yeah, so uh we had early investors in in the company. Um and uh at some point I think we both the investors and and us founders we saw that we were kind of wanting to go in different directions. Uh so I think that was that was kind of the trigger to us going out and and uh looking in the market.

Um then uh we basically went out uh through a company with the with the prospect and uh we had uh all kinds of meetings. I I uh for a couple of months we were meeting up with uh with uh private equity from all over and even some uh strategic uh buyers and stuff like that. uh and basically presented the case. Uh and I think uh I think with the dailies we we found a a very good match.

We we really connected well with the the partner who uh who was uh on the case. Uh and I think we also fit pretty well in their portfolio. they they have quite a few companies that are kind of um you could see say servicing uh other companies uh that that will do selling online somehow. So I think we fit uh quite well in in that portfolio. So I think yeah not so long ago you launched um flow right like tell me a bit more about the flow itself and at the ROI but also the pain behind organizing events and conferences.

Yeah. Yeah. So uh after of of course during COVID right everyone was doing webinars and every we were all doing that trying to to build something right and I think what we saw it was pretty early after uh co after everything started opening up we saw that maybe we are ready to start meeting again and then we did a few uh few uh test runs you could say and

then what we realized is that that in our business It's full of creative people. They they work all day with their creative minds trying to to spot the new trends and and all of that. And somehow they seem to gotten a little bit forgotten when it came to knowledge sharing and networking and all of that. So with that in mind, we basically decided that hey, we we should do something to create a community around uh around uh all of these people and uh that that's how flow started and then uh it just it it has grown like crazy from there.

So today it's almost like a company within the company. Uh we have uh several of these what we call the big flow events that are multi-day events where we uh gather all all the the people from from an area to uh to within the creative industry to to give sessions and and talks and so on. One of the things we've been very very focused on from the start and still uh really focus on a lot is that it's not an event where you come to sell.

So it's not an event where you come and pitch your ideas and so on. you come to share and and uh it it it really has built into a real community and it it feels we we see even competitors uh out there talking about the the pain points they have in their daily life and it it's just for us it's amazing when we when we get to join all these conversations we really get to know our market and our our clients

and then of course u it's it's just fantastic to see that it has become such a success. What about the podcast? Uh how different is it from a growth standpoint, growth strategy and a networking strategy? I see you also leverage some of these. Yeah, I I think um it came out of some of the same uh conversations when when we went to to these flow events.

We talked to so so many talented people and a lot of these people of course they had a voice within the company they were in but they didn't really have a voice uh so much outside of that space. Uh and there's so many creative ideas and and ways to to work within this uh this uh business. So uh it it it basically came from that that we decided hey we we need to bring some of these people.

Of course, we do it at the flow at the flow events, but uh we can't do that all the time. So, we also wanted to bring uh some of these people in and give them half an hour, one hour to talk about the subjects that uh that really matters to them. So, um so that's that's pretty much u most of the people in the the flow podcast, they they uh they are people we met at the flow events or who's been speaking at the flow events and so on.

And what about other top uh growth strategies that you use to acquire clients other than these two? We so far we've been very sales driven. So we have uh sales team uh teams all over Europe and America. These are our two biggest markets more more or less 50/50. Uh so we have been very sales driven and and basically having sales team uh visiting clients and calling clients and so on.

Um, we're starting to move a little bit into some productled growth. Uh, we are right now creating a lot of these new AI products and so on. And we see that starting to to push them out to our clients in in different ways could actually make sense. Uh, so so we're starting to leverage that a bit. Um, so far mostly within the platform as as uh uh information you could say for our clients, but uh I I think we will probably do more in in in that direction in the future as well.

You still invest in a lot of ads I would guess. Uh do you also do like cold outbound? You have a sales team? Yeah. Yeah, we do both. Yeah. So um and And how how functioning is it like uh what what type of results are you getting or is it like mostly organic inbound from your SEO? Uh that there's quite a lot of organic uh inbound. I think in our business a lot of our clients especially our our sales team are are basically uh looking for enterprise clients and uh the the time to to close a deal with such a client can be very long.

Uh so some of these clients we've been in contact with for some of them for years. Um some of them we uh we visit several times. Um, and I think for a lot of them, a lot a lot of our clients, it's not just switching to to uh some of them is is switching from in-house to to using a vendor. Uh, and it's not like an easy decision that's just made super quickly.

So uh so for for a lot of these clients it it's more like entering a partnership and uh and we will help them uh with the processes we know from different places and and so on and uh of course we will also try to integrate their processes into our processes and so on. So it is often I sometimes I say a lot of the the sales is a little bit like uh when you are selling a house you you can't just go uh ringing doorbells and say hey would you like to buy a house you need someone who's actually looking to buy a house right and then you kind of connect the dots um and and for for our sales

teams it's it's often the the same but it's still even today now we've been in the business for a long time I think we are probably the biggest uh supplier in in this area. And even today, we still meet clients who haven't heard about us. And and of course, every time that happens, we're like, what did we do wrong? And we try to correct that and and do better in the future.

And if sales cycle is that long at the enterprise level, how do you actually measure the efficiency, the performance of a a sales rep? Uh yeah, that's that's a good question. Um It's too late, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and and it is super super hard. Um we we know that uh of course the sales cycles are not always that long. So so we we should be closing some deals uh over the year.

Uh but else I I think of course we do measure the the normal numbers but a lot of it is also about deep uh you could say personal relations, right? and and uh talking to uh to everyone in in the sales team and figuring out where are the deals now and what's moving forward, what actions are we taking to move things forward. But but you're completely right.

It it's super hard. I know the marketing team says exactly the same. If we cut all that spent today, we'll probably not see any change for the next six months at least. And then of course, we'll start to see everything right. So, so it is it is uh that is one of the challenges we have. I would say uh sometimes I wish we we would have sales cycles of a week.

It would be much much easier to uh to measure. Interesting. And yeah, tell me about your top goals for this year. What you want to accomplish with the pixels? Yeah, so I think for myself uh and and the teams I'm in, I'm as you know, I'm the CTO. So I'm very focused on uh on the the whole engineering team, the AI team and and uh we're working very very closely with the product team and it is a super exciting time with the with all the stuff happening within AI.

So uh we are really focusing on launching a lot of uh new products involving AI, a lot of new partnerships uh around because you know there's new AI companies coming out every week. We can't do it all. So we want to partner up with the best and and uh and help our clients get access to to these tools. Uh so that is our huge focus in in uh in the engineering team and the product team.

Um then of course overall it it's it's also uh super important for us to to grow the business. So I know our sales and marketing team they are extremely focused on that. Uh and so so that's also uh one of the big the big goals of the year. And how do you determine what uh feature should be first on the growth map? Yeah. So I would say we have a product team of uh seven people I think now.

So they they spend a lot of time in uh in discover remote uh basically visiting clients or being on calls with clients and and really really deeply trying to understand the needs of clients. So that's that's one of the biggest uh you could say sources of truth for us that they analyze all the information they get. And of course again flow is a is a great opportunity for us.

we get to talk to maybe a hundred clients in in a couple of days and and really take in what ideas they have. But then we also see that because everything is happening so fast with the with all the AI stuff, right? A lot of our clients don't really know what they want to do. They can't tell us because they don't necessarily know uh what's possible, right?

So I think a lot is also us doing a lot of experiments and then basically trying to bring that uh I've been in several meetings with uh with some of our bigger clients where we try to present technology that's that's possible today that wasn't possible a year or two years ago right and just try to to get their feedback on what what on this technology what is

interesting what is not interesting what could make a difference for you um so that is that is very much uh how we do it and and of course we also uh there's also a certain amount of gut feeling. We a lot of us has been uh in this business for many many years. Uh our our uh head of product is uh he used to be at several of the bigger fashion brands uh and and e-commerce uh shops here in Europe and and of course knows a lot about his insights from back then.

So we also taking that into account. Very cool. Well, thanks for being on today, Jan. Where can uh people find out more about you? Yeah, I first of all, I would definitely say uh pixels.com is a is a great place to look. But else I would also love to connect on LinkedIn where you can find me Yanos clock medicine and uh I'm there. So that was Yan and Trolls.