Learnings from founding a

computer vision startup

Till Quack (kooaba) & Jan Erik Solem (Polar Rose)
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Founded 2006, 10 employees

Founders: Herbert Bay, Till Quack,
Luc Van Gool
Location: Zürich, Switzerland

Object recognition for

consumer applications
On mobile and web

Spin-off from ETH Zürich

Still close relations to ETH
 kooaba makes images smarter

Mobile Search (since 08/09)

(more about products during talk)

Auto-tagging (Q2 2010)

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Till Quack
PhD with Prof. Luc van Gool (graduated in 2009)

Research interests: Object Recognition + Internet + Mobile

kooaba founded during PhD

Interests in innovation, product design etc.

Two former companies

(e.g. mosaickr.com with T. Weise and S. Saur. Sold in 2010.)
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Founded 2004, 15 employees

Malmö, Sweden: HQ, management, computer vision
Warsaw, Poland: products, infrastructure
Sophia-Antipolis, France: computer vision

Spin-off from Lund University.

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Face recognition for

mobile, desktop and web
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Jan Erik Solem

PhD with Profs. Anders Heyden and Fredrik Kahl
(graduated in 2006)

Research interests:
large-scale vision, object recognition and visual retrieval

Polar Rose founded during PhD

Interests in entrepreneurship, Web and mobile

What to expect
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

What we learned along the way

Flickr:kate at yr own risk

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

What’s special about Vision startups

Flickr:Pete Prodoehl
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Discussion between JES and TQ - and you

Flickr: Katie Stine

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Lots of pointers to resources

Flickr:Ramkarthikblogger
Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Syllabus
1. Why a startup? JES / TQ 215-230
2. The business idea JES/TQ 230-245
3. Business plan: what and who to write it for? JES 245-300
4. Team JES 300-315
5. Funding: who and how to ask for money JES 315-330

Coffee Break 330pm-4pm

6. Product design: finding out what people really want TQ 400-430
7. Business models: how to make money? TQ 430-450
8. Software engineering: doing research vs. delivering a product TQ 450-520
9. Marketing & sales: getting people to know & buy your products TQ 520-545
10. Competition and positioning: OMG, Google is doing the same thing! JES 545-600
Let’s start!