www.vloggi.com
Entrepreneurial journey told by two students
Story written by Claudia Dickinson
“My father founded a business when I was growing up and my brother has founded his own business too. Working in the travel journalism industry, numerous people had also set up their own companies. So, I guess I have been surrounded by people who have embarked on entrepreneurial ventures. However, that wasn’t my motivation for Vloggi. I had an idea, and I thought that somebody had to bring this idea to market, and if no one else was considering doing it, it had to be me. And now looking back, I’ve sort of come full circle in my career. Straight after university I got a job in a digital television start up. It involved time spent between London and San Francisco. Being in Silicon Valley, I was really in the global centre of technological innovation. I then went on to work for Microsoft and started a video and public relations unit. Later I worked for a prestigious aviation magazine, travelling the world, and flying somewhere different every week, which was great. I also managed to get them to cover European politics more. I then got a job as a travel journalist but since I had this political background and quite liked the travel aspect, I joined a political lobby group in the tourism sector. And this then led to that entrepreneurial light bulb moment that’s so often talked about in the start-up world. The one problem that everyone in the tourism industry had, was that there wasn’t enough video, they needed video, video, video. So, I thought hold on, everyone has a camera on their phone, if only we could work out a way to turn everyone’s videos into footage for the tourism industry. If you fast forward 10 years from now, we need about 500 times more video than we do currently. The future is all about screens and digital innovation. In 10 years, the media landscape is going to have completely transformed and everything is going to transition to video. So, this whole rapidly produced video compilation idea is the unique selling point that will be needed to make these ultra-niche and targeted videos in the future. So having this basic problem of needing videos, and looking at what the future holds, there was this gap in the market for a tool that democratizes video and that changes people’s lives, and that was the beginning of what is now, Vloggi.”
Story written by Mai Shi
My name is Justin Wastnage, I am the CEO and founder of Vloggi. The goal of building this video platform is turn our customer footage into authentic video content. Before I start my entrepreneurial venture, I studied at the French Institutd’Études Politiques political studies school in Rennes for my bachelor’s degree, and I am an honour graduate of MBA in European studies and French from University of Berby for my master’s degree. For my business venture, I believe every community should have its own TV channel and we are entering the era of video production, where niche programming will be created by communities around us. This new wave is narrowcasting and my company, vloggi, is the core of this revolution. With 2.5 billion smartphones in the world, I realized we could turn anyone into their remote film team. And the Vloggi’s chance was to build the platform that enable people making video and make complications quickly.
Before I start my career, my dad was founded a business when I was growing up and he did influence me. My dad was senior and managing director of a fashion company in the UK. And then he took a chance and founded a business very similar to what GAP became, is called Aca Joe. I was one of leading aviation and tourism policy expert for my previously working experience. One of the key issues I constantly encountered was the need for video production on location at scale while I was working with senior tourism industry executive. During that period, I became one of the first people to create the term of video blog, and vloggi for now. Meanwhile, the original goal of starting my business is to prove my idea to people and I thought the unique problem the tourism and travel industry was that all their products that they were selling wasn’t about location. So, Vloggi kind of proved that concept that, people could receive a brief, filmed a brief and then send the videos back and it could be assembled. For strategy of growth, I want to use design thinking and focus on the Vloggi’s customers problems and the way to solve it, not convince them to use it.