Web Masters

Raj Kapoor shares the story of how he built Snapfish, one of the Web's first and largest digital photo sharing and printing services.

Show Notes

Raj Kapoor is the Chief Strategy Officer at Lyft. But before joining Lyft, Raj was the founder and CEO of another well known consumer tech company called Snapfish. In fact, the startup strategy he’s deploying at Lyft is a strategy he began developing at Snapfish over two decades earlier.

Snapfish is a digital photo management service that lets users print digital photos either as traditional photos or on things like coffee mugs, face masks, calendars, shirts, and lots of other things you've probably never even thought of. While those are common services now, they weren’t common back when Raj launched Snapfish in 1999 and built it into a company he’d ultimately sell to Hewlett Packard for $300 million.

Instead, when Raj launched Snapfish, few people were using digital cameras. Sure, it might seem strange to target a market that doesn’t exist, but, as you'll hear in this episode, the lack of digital camera users was actually a huge part of how Snapfish became so successful.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What is Web Masters?

Web Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.