Status
Pre-beta · PRD: v4 · V1 target: 10–14 months · Beta plan: 40–60 photographers
2
Modes to unify
0
Tools that do both today
3
Licensing dimensions
2
Founders, both working photographers
The Challenge
Photography software is structurally split. Pixieset, Honeybook, and Studio Ninja own the wedding and portrait side. BlinkBid and fotoBiz own the commercial and editorial side. Most working photographers cross both worlds — a wedding photographer who shoots a brand campaign, a food photographer who books an engagement session — and the incumbents force them to maintain two CRMs, two contact databases, two contracting flows, and two sets of payment rails. Honeybook’s ~80% price hike in February 2025 and the VSCO acquisition of Tave in May 2025 cracked the wedge open. The opening was clear: a single operating system where the client profile is the data atom, and wedding mode and commercial mode are views onto the same memory.
Impact & Results
A complete dual-mode product thesis, a PRD at v4, and a Next.js scaffold of the marketing site and dashboard — built around a shared client profile, a unified quote-and-bid drafter, and a licensing engine that models territory × duration × media as first-class data. Pricing structure mapped against incumbent gouging (Free / Solo $49 / Solo Dual $79 / Studio Dual $129). Closed beta targeted at 40–60 photographers split evenly between the two modes, free during beta.
What I Learned
- The dual-mode thesis is the moat, not a feature. Incumbents can’t span both worlds without rebuilding their data model. Anything that quietly forces a single-mode assumption — a wedding date on the root client record, a single contract template — is a regression, not a shortcut.
- Licensing is the hardest single feature, and the most defensible. Territory × duration × media is what every commercial photographer underprices and every brand exploits. Getting it right is a wedge no wedding-only tool can answer.
- AI has to be the architecture, not a sprinkle. Quote drafting, transcript ingestion, and client-memory synthesis belong in V1. If they ship in V2 the product is just another CRM with chat bolted on.
The Outcome
A serious, dual-mode operating system for working photographers — Linear meets Aperture in tone, AI-native by architecture, with one client memory across both halves of the business. The product is built by a commercial photographer and a wedding photographer who use it on their own studios first. V1 targeted at a closed beta of 40–60 photographers, free during beta, with paid tiers and a Studio plan rolling in post-launch.
Project Deliverables
- Product Thesis
- PRDs
- Marketing Site
- Dashboard Scaffold
- Brand System
- Pricing Model
Key Features
- Dual-mode by default — Wedding and commercial share one client profile, one quote drafter, one set of payment rails. Switch context, not tools.
- Licensing engine — Territory × duration × media as a first-class object. The hardest thing in commercial pricing, modeled correctly from day one.
- AI quote & bid drafter — Transcript-aware, client-memory-aware, mode-aware. Drafts the bid; you sharpen the bid.
- One client memory — Conversations, files, contracts, references — every interaction folds back into a single searchable surface per client.
- Transcript ingestion — Drop a discovery call recording in; the system pulls the brief, the deliverables, the timeline, and the licensing ask straight into the bid draft.
- Mode-aware contracts — Wedding contracts, commercial agreements, model and location releases generated from the same client record, no template juggling.
- Unified payments — Retainers, milestone invoices, and final balances run on one set of rails across both modes — not a wedding tool stapled to a commercial tool.
- Project-vs-shoot model — A wedding day and a multi-day commercial campaign are first-class shapes, not the same calendar event with different labels.
- Pricing tiers built for the cross-over — Free / Solo $49 / Solo Dual $79 / Studio $129 — the only tier on the market that prices dual-mode photographers honestly.
- Photographer-built — Both founders are working photographers. Every screen is dogfooded against real shoots before it ships.