Clickpic: image & sound search made in Brazil

Posted by By Angelica Mari at 7 February, at 16 : 27 PM Print

Marco Vanossi is the founder of Clickpic, currently an iOS mobile application underpinned by image and sound recognition technology. A serial entrepreneur, he is now taking his latest venture to the next step of development.

To get an idea of what Clickpic’s technology can enable, imagine you are reading the sports pages and see a photo of your team’s striker celebrating the winning goal on the match the night before, which you didn’t get the chance to see – the app allows you to point a smartphone at the picture and watch a video with the actual moment the player scored the goal.

Vanossi, a 25-year-old computer science graduate and the brain behind the technology, has been creating tech start-ups since the age of 12 – and now he wants to position Clickpic as a key provider of services to B2B clients, notably media and publishing companies wanting to boost interactivity of products and services.

“Our mission is to engage people with brands in a very interactive way. It is all about gamification- our idea is to get close to printed media and TV companies who are looking to offer something innovative to their clients,” Vanossi told IT Decisions.

Funding matters

Vanossi is now after extra capital to further expand his business, which has offices in São Paulo and in San Francisco. In 2010, he raised R$500,000 ($290,000) from a Brazilian private investor. Looking back, the entrepreneur said it was not an easy task to raise money back then, given the novelty around image-based search.

“It was very complicated to get funding, because investors [in Brazil] are more focused on biomedicine, agriculture and so on. I had some advantages though, because I had a patent, as well as some media exposure by the time I went searching for funding,” Vanossi said.

“You start talking about profitability and the possibilities [of Clickpic’s applications in the market] and people start to listen,” he added.

When it comes to searching for opportunities, Vanossi describes himself as “shameless”: he knocked on several doors including every investor on the Brazilian venture capital association’s book and Abilio Diniz, one of Brazil’s most powerful businessmen and owner of retail chain Grupo Pão de Açúcar.

“I sent [Diniz] a very succinct email, it was something along the lines of ‘What would it be like if you could point your mobile phone at a product image and be able to buy it?’,” Vanossi recalled.

“He did get back to me extremely quickly and I started working with his innovation team on some ideas for pilots. But I was unlucky that during the crisis, all the innovation projects were canned, so I lost all my contacts.”

The Pão de Açúcar experience and the bureaucracy involved in getting corporates to invest in his venture prompted Vanossi to start focusing his efforts on individual investors, though he is also in contact with venture capitalists in Brazil and in the US for his next funding round.

“We have a good idea of what the market wants. We are talking to various individual investors and investment funds, maintaining the conversation and keeping those relationships going,” he said.

Entrepreneurship in Brazil

After a trade mission to the US in 2010, Vanossi decided to split his time between Brazil and San Francisco. According to the entrepreneur, the first visit to Silicon Valley was enough to prompt him to stay closer to the action.

“I have always done everything by myself and, until [the first trip to SF] I had no one to bounce ideas with. When you get to Silicon Valley, there is a much more dynamic environment and lots of feedback – I realised I had left that ‘little square’,” Vanossi said.

“I saw all those qualified and intelligent people willing to help and felt in a surreal environment. People are always like ‘What can I do to help you?’,” he added.

Vanossi pointed out that the Brazilian environment for entrepreneurs is ‘too disorganized’ and there are not enough successful stories to inspire young people.  He says he will do his bit to change that scenario by “feeding the ecosystem” – making connections, supporting groups that help budding entrepreneurs such as Brazil Innovators, as well as making his venture a success.

“I see foreigners innovating [in Brazil] instead of Brazilians themselves and that is because young Brazilians do not have role models. People from outside have a better perception of what is going on, whereas locals see the wave but do not see the opportunities,” Vanossi said.

“There are some success stories already such as [group buying engine] Peixe Urbano and [social ad network] Boo-Box, but there are lots of opportunities.,” he added.

“And there are lots of foreign investors that are coming to meet that need [of funding for new projects] – which is good, as there will be successful companies, but they will all have foreign capital.”

Check the video above, where Vanossi talks about his venture, his experiences in Silicon Valley and what needs to be done to foster entrepreneurs in Brazil. 

Photo by JD Hancock licensed under Creative Commons

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