Forget a thousand words.
Today a digital picture could be worth a thousand dollars, in saved design, construction and fuel costs.
That potential to save money on home improvements and much more exists thanks to iPhotoMeasure, a groundbreaking program released in November by Tarzana-based DigiContractor Inc. The concept is simple: the software enables an individual to determine the real-life measurements of anything in a photo taken by a digital camera, a sort of virtual tape measure. Take a photo of a room, and with the software, you can tell how tall and wide the door, table and windows are in real life.
“People would always come up and ask me what they should do with their house,” said Paul Minor, a former contractor turned real estate lecturer who came up with the idea in 2004. “They wanted an addition, to move the front door, things like that. It turned out I was giving a lot of free advice and not making any money.”
Handing out all that free advice was frustrating, but led Minor to conceive the idea of the software. “The good news is that it was the incubator for iPhotoMeasure,” said Minor, “because I was looking for a way to capitalize on that.”
Shortly thereafter, he met Pete Robbins, a technology consultant and network administrator who had the development and technical expertise that Minor needed to bring the product to life. Robbins, who had worked for a series of Internet startup companies before teaming with Minor, came on board to lend technical expertise.
It took the pair about eight months to write and produce the program, with the help of UC Santa Barbara computer science professor Yuan-Fang Wang. Robbins and Minor spent the last year beta testing the software and worked with Woodland Hills software Development firm Glyphix on the current release. The program works based on relative measurement: the user zooms in on a “target,” either downloaded without charge from the iPhotoMeasure Web site or included with the software, which serves as a baseline measurement relative to other objects photographed. The targets come in two sizes, 7.5 inches by 7.5 inches and 15 by 15 inches, which provide different levels of detail. To set the baseline, users post the “target” square on a wall or object to be pictures, zoom the camera in so that the target fills the entire frame, and take a photo. Once the target has been set, photos can be taken of areas slated for improvement and sent to a contractor or designer who has the software for upload and measurement.
Because the software is in its early release, it has some limitations. The accuracy ranges between 96 percent to dead-on, depending on the curvature of the camera’s lens.
“There are differences from camera to camera, and we can’t change that, so there will be some distortion,” Minor said, “but we can come to 96 percent accuracy, and we are working to improve that.”
IPhotoMeasure’s present version is accurate to centimeters, but not millimeters. Future versions are in the early stages of development, Robbins said.
While the software won’t necessarily eliminate the need for professional work, it can at a minimum save time and money in the bidding process by eliminating the need for a detailed initial once-over.
The product is available online right now, and DigiContractor is working with AB & T; Sales Corp. to push the product into retailers like Circuit City, Fry’s Electronics, Office Depot and the Home Depot catalog.
Currently customers can either buy and install the program for $119 or download a version online for $99.
Resistance ahead?
Los Angeles interior designer Drew Lage said that in a city as spread out as L.A., the driving involved to take measurements in order to bid a job for just one potential customer could take most of a day.
“Assuming it’s reasonably accurate, you can get a decent estimate on a price per linear foot, and by the time you meet face-to-face with the client you can have a lot of information already,” Lage said. “I think resistance will be primarily from contractors and sub contractors, because they are literally craftsmen and much of that industry isn’t generally as tech savvy yet as architecture or interior design.
Many of our cabinetmakers, for example, would never quote us on a job we are working on until they come out and measure things themselves,” Lage continued.
For all its potential, business isn’t booming for iPhotoMeasure just yet. So far, DigiContractor has sold about 200 copies of the program and the company has pulled in just $6,000 a month since November. Minor said his goal is for the company to do $600,000 in next 12 months and between $8 million and $9 million within the next two years.
They started with $150,000 in what Minor calls “bootstrap” funding (money that came from Minor himself) and are now up to $250,000. Robbins estimates the company needs about $2 million in funding to undertake the production and marketing campaign to successfully launch the program, and the company is currently seeking venture capital, angel or other private investment funding to cover staffing, production and future development expenses. They’ve already hired a part-time chief operating officer, Laurent Ramis, and formed a five-member board of directors.
Minor and Robbins readily acknowledge they face barriers to adoption in the building and design world, but pointed out that the program doesn’t do away with most of the traditional elements of the business.
“There’s certainly going to be some resistance in the arena because people are used to driving out, meeting customers and shaking their hands,” Minor said. “Contractors as a breed have done things their way for a number of years so anything new is bound to take time to accept, but from a consumer perspective it’s ‘Wow, how do you do that?’ ”
Broad potential
Perhaps most significantly, the potential applications such as law enforcement, nature photography, or mapping to name a few go far beyond home improvement.
The software’s patent application is pending, but there are plenty of potential competitors in the field: lots of big, well-heeled players in the tech world could catch on and develop similar programs of their own.
A strategic partnership with a photo manufacturer like Fuji or Kodak, Minor said, would be welcome, and the founders have considered options for the future.
“Our exit strategy, if we decide to pursue one, is to be acquired and ourselves be absorbed into a larger company,” Minor said.
The program is that it also calculates measurements in the metric system, making it applicable outside the United States which is where Minor and Robbins foresee the bulk of the company’s sales.
DigiContractor Inc.
Core Business:
Developing and marketing software that allows images in digital photos to be accurately measured
Employees in 2006:
3
Employees in 2007:
3
Goal:
To become the industry standard digital measurement tool
Driving Force: People’s desire to save time and money by using digital cameras for measurements, plus wider applications
