2. 2 IESE Business School-University of Navarra
Olapic: Migrating the Business ModelE-171-E
of working habits, including the capacity for analysis, a strategic vision, teamwork and high
standards, all of which would be of great help later on in developing his own company. Pau
remembered one of the first things he had been told when he joined BCG, and which applied
to his experiences with Olapic: “This is a marathon made up of sprints.” While he was
working at BCG, he had made three attempts at launching an Internet start-up, but they
never panned out. His goal was to get an MBA that would help him develop his leadership
capabilities, hone his business skills and make contacts to support his efforts toward
entrepreneurship.
Luis
Luis was born in Zaragoza in 1980. Interested in technology from an early age, he had also
studied telecommunications engineering. In 2003 he joined Accenture, where he worked in
the Telecommunications and Advanced Technology Division, designing software for fighter
planes. Next he worked at Ericsson, where they gave him the opportunity to direct technical
teams in Europe and Africa. That experience taught him how entrepreneurs adapted to their
environments to create different types of companies, which encouraged him to start a
business of his. He thought that studying an MBA would help him make his goal of
entrepreneurship a reality. In this respect, he said: “I always admired my parents for their
entrepreneurial skills and because they were the masters of their own future. From the time
I was very young, they passed on the value of hard work and a job well done.”
José
José was born in Madrid in 1980. He had always been in close contact with the business
world. His grandfather was the owner of a sausage factory that he built up from nothing. His
father had also worked there: “When my father went into work on weekend afternoons,
I used to pass the time running around the factory full of sausages,” he reminisced.
He lived at home with his three brothers, who had grown up in an environment of joint work
and constant collaboration. They all helped each other out, which forced them to cooperate
in all aspects. At the age of 16, José earned his first salary at a summer camp in the United
States, which he had attended since he was very young. José had decided to study
international commerce because he wanted to do something that would give him experience
in the business world. He began his studies in Dublin and then spent his last years in Madrid.
In 2002, he began working at Venture Consulting. Later on, he went to work for Roland
Berger Strategy Consultants, where he came into contact with people who had their own
projects and were interested in becoming entrepreneurs. The time came when he had to
decide whether to continue his business education in the United States: “I wanted to do an
MBA to give me time to research an opportunity, but also so that if I launched a project and
it didn’t work out, I would have a safety net,” explained José. For the same reason he did not
want to be sponsored by the company where he worked.
In 2007, all three applied for admission to the MBA program at Columbia University and
were accepted. Four months before the program began, in May 2008, Pau, Luis and José met
in Madrid. After talking about their hobbies and ambitions, they discovered that they had all
recently been thinking along the same lines: starting a company in an Internet-related area,
since it was a source of great opportunities at the time.
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3. 3IESE Business School-University of Navarra
Olapic: Migrating the Business Model E-171-E
The MBA and the Opportunity for Creating a Company
In January 2009, during the first year of the MBA, the three of them took advantage of some
vacation days and organized a trip to Las Vegas. When they got back, they met up with
14 other friends to share the pictures they had taken. After wracking their brains, they
realized that the only way to share the pictures would be to go to the library and put them
on a storage device. That was when their friends suggested they should create a service that
would let a group of people share pictures of an event, so everyone could see them. A few
months later, their interest in launching a business and the fact that they hadn’t received any
internship offers with interesting companies helped them decide to turn the idea that had
been taking shape since January into their summer project. Initially, they focused the project
on the bridal sector, since many of their friends were getting married at that time and they
had identified a number of necessary characteristics for monetizing the platform. In the first
place, although the platform was intended for groups, the bride and groom were clearly the
parties that would have the most interest in paying for the service. Secondly, they calculated
that they would be able to charge a high price due to the emotional value involved and the
low price sensitivity of the bridal couple. Lastly, after analyzing the sector, the figures
indicated that approximately 2.5 million weddings were celebrated each year in the United
States, representing a market of over $20 billion annually.
The initial concept was based on an online platform that gave the bride and groom to access
to the pictures taken by their wedding guests. All the guests received an invitation to upload
their pictures of the event; they could then visit a shared online album where the pictures
were displayed and could be downloaded by both the bridal couple and their guests. The
concept was completely revolutionary, given that the existing solutions lacked privacy
settings and did not allow for the possibility of multiple collaborators. Furthermore, Olapic
realized that its customers had very specific demands within the event market, such as
allowing the couple to manage the photos themselves or using an e-mail notification system
to maximize the number of pictures that were uploaded.
The method they chose to monetize the project was to create two versions: a free version and
a paid version. With the free version, users had access to the first 100 photos, but could not
see the rest. The paid version had a price of $80 and offered unlimited access to all the
pictures that were uploaded. Payment was deferred until after the wedding date. The service
was free if fewer than 100 pictures were added. There was also the possibility of purchasing
packages that included, among other things, an album for the bride and groom with the
pictures they selected and an instruction manual for the platform. Payment was made by the
bridal couple, whereas wedding guests could register and upload photos to the event album
at no charge. This project gave the team a chance to test the prototype.
In order to speed up the platform development, they hired an Indian company. The platform
was developed using relatively simple technology that was easy to replicate. On the other hand,
it was difficult to ensure stability and reliability in the beginning. They focused all of their
attention on looking for potential customers. At the end of August 2009, they launched the
first prototype. Starting in September, they picked up a few customers, which made it easier to
perfect the platform. The first customers were friends who had married during that period.
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4. 4 IESE Business School-University of Navarra
Olapic: Migrating the Business ModelE-171-E
At the beginning of 2010, during the second year of the Master’s degree at Columbia, they
heard about an event held at the school called the “Greenhouse Program,” which invited
student participation. The program was limited to a small number of projects or
entrepreneurial initiatives, which had to be presented and defended. Team members could
come from outside the Columbia community, coaching was offered and there was also the
possibility of attending a series of meetings with prominent investors and seasoned
entrepreneurs. The program offered the opportunity to participate in a contest for
entrepreneurial initiatives; the first prize was $25,000 in funding for the winning project. In
order to be eligible to win the prize, there were two conditions: the first was that $15,000
had to be obtained from an investor outside of the university and, second, the team had to
work full time on the project. Encouraged by the positive commentaries they had received
from classmates and professors at school, the Olapic team decided to participate: “The fact
that we hadn’t received enough criticism from the people around us created an initial stage
of conformity with the product, which kept us from seeing some serious problems,”
commented Pau.
All the same, they prepared for the contest and won in June, as they were graduating from
the MBA program: “We didn’t win because the idea was good; we won because the product
had already been launched and we had paying customers. Which goes to show that
implementation was what really mattered,” pointed out José.
Upon finishing the MBA, they found that the Spanish and U.S. economies were going
through rough times, and the fact that Columbia believed in them encouraged them to
continue developing the project:
“The Greenhouse Program wasn’t much help on a theoretical level, but we did raise the
first round of capital and we got to work. In fact, we actually had some really good job
offers, but we decided to continue with the project, which meant turning down some
pretty attractive proposals,” recalled Pau.
On the other hand, the contacts they had made through the MBA were useful in attracting
customers and also for developing the company during the initial stages: “Like it or not, the
MBA puts you in contact with people who have launched ventures before, and it can even
be more helpful than reading a book,” remarked Luis.
Pau commented on the MBA program along similar lines:
“The MBA puts you in sync with a group of people who are all at the same point in their
lives, which makes it easier to start a project. [...] It is common to come across people in
similar situations as you go through your career. In our case, the MBA and the
atmosphere in New York gave us the time to think things over with a safety net to fall
back on.”
After completing the MBA, the three committed themselves to Olapic and were enthusiastic
about entering the new stage of development. The desire to start a business, to create
something from scratch, to take control of their own futures, along with the opportunity to
work with colleagues who shared the same values, were some of the most important
motivating factors.
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