Last March, we spoke about Memeoirs, the startup that creates hardcopy or digital books from digital content, on the occasion of a €225,000 investment from Pozzoni Group, the Italian and international printed materials giant which, following a philosophy of open innovation, decided to take advantage of the business integration opportunities offered by Memeoirs.
Memeoirs recently took part in Dublin’s Web Summit, where we met with its managers (they were among the selected Italian start-ups at the event) who told us about their new strategies from a technological, commercial and corporate point of view.
“Over 15,000 users are currently registered in the website, with a rather high 7% conversion rate” says Giacomo Miceli, one of Memeoirs’s founders, “our priority is currently that of lowering the CAC with marketing techniques that are relatively new to us, such as Facebook ads. First we want to improve what we have, which is the compatibility with emails, WhatsApp and FB content in terms of aesthetic presentation and appearance of the product. Afterwards, we will start to expand the system’s key functionalities, which will allow for improved editing (support for multiple sources, exclusion of certain messages) and integration of other data sources. Starting in March, it will be possible to create books using images from different providers, while the integration of twitter and blog contents will come a little later. Twitter is high on the list of the providers we intend to support in the mid-term for the creation of our books. In the short-term, we are going to expand compatibility with new types of Facebook contents (such as picture albums and the possibility of creating a book from a page). In general, our mission is to be present where the most important and meaningful memories are held”.
The implementation of this project is technologically, and therefore financially, demanding. How do you intend to proceed from this point of view?
“We’ll need new investments, despite Memeoirs is already invoicing in over 40 countries” Giacomo goes on to say. “We are currently applying with the Autonomous Province of Trento to receive approximately €170,000 in matching funds, following Techpeaks program, and we are also trying to receive mid-term financing covered by Medio Credito Centrale (Fondo di Garanzia). We should know more about these funding measures soon”.
“We are acting on different fronts to raise funds through the tools and guarantees made available by Italy and its institutions,” adds Luca Canepa, President and business angel investor in the start-up, “however the business will naturally evolve towards a new round of equity investment possibly taking place in the second half of 2015. In the meantime, we are also growing under a commercial and business model profile. We initially focused on a B2C model, now we’re starting to set up important B2B2C partnerships, in particular in tourism and event organisation in Italy and abroad, and in the wedding planning sector, both having proved very appealing. For instance, we are currently laying down a “Memeoirs test” program with Dolomiti.it S.r.l. for ski schools and hotel chains in the Dolomite area.”
Web Summit 2014, on the left Luca Canepa – investor e President, June Carmody – Marketing & community – e Giacomo Miceli, founder
Memeoirs’ results and future development are heading towards an extensive publishing system that is able to take advantage of all originally digital content by drawing on different web, mobile and social sharing platforms. In this sense it represents a rarity in the international panorama, and differentiates itself from other web applications, which can be regarded conceptually as competitors. Pastbook is probably the most similar application to Memeoirs, but it is limited to pictures, MySocialBook deals with pictures and text contents and is limited to Facebook, and Photobook or Shutterfly are overall consolidated businesses, yet they are focused on picture albums and users have to download their application.
The US and North American markets are showing particular appreciation for Memeoirs and account for 60% of the company’s current turnover compared to the European market’s 35%.
“Memeoirs is evolving quickly and we are convinced that our product can be adapted to different markets,” Giacomo Miceli and Luca Canepa conclude, “for instance in the educational entertainment sector, in children’s and professional books, as well as in the sector of personalised gifts, which is rapidly growing. In addition, the quantity of digital contents and conversations is increasing as well, if we think about the fact that Whatsapp users alone exchange over 65 billion messages each day.”
