Entrepreneur Meetup: Luke Beard of Exposure
Luke Beard is the CEO & Founder of Exposure — a beautiful website for your photo stories (and the platform Atlanta Ventures uses to share stories of some of our favorite entrepreneurs). From England to San Francisco to Atlanta, Luke’s journey has been filled with hard work, a touch of luck, good timing, a solid circle of support, and a creative eye for design.
On March 28, he joined a packed house of fellow SaaS professionals to share more on the past four years of Exposure, his love for MARTA, and founder lessons learned along the way.
So You’re a Classically Trained Photographer?
“Um no, zero-trained photographer! Or is it YouTube trained Photographer? I have never had formal training in anything I’ve ever done. YouTube University — I graduated with honors, I think!”
“Learning anything has never been easier, as long as you have the time. Being part photographer helps me build photography related products a lot better.”
Exposure Was Born
“Exposure doesn’t have any atypical startup story to it, apart from I built it ‘cause I needed it.”
It all began in Estonia, while shooting chairs in a prison. Luke took all these pictures and when he came home, didn’t have anywhere to put them alongside the story. In 2013, he put content front and center, which allowed everything else to fall away.
“If I’m able to display content in such a way that people are emotionally connected to it through just layout, there’s a bunch of stuff there.”
To get their first customer, they did a sketch, beta, business model. This product-focused mentality brought in their first 800 customers. Both Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons utilize the Exposure platform.
“Virality is built in. 89% of the use cases are ‘I want to publish this content and share it with the world.’”
Atlanta Focus
“Atlanta Tech Village has lots more business and client people. In San Francisco I don’t think I ever have one conversation about churn.”
“Building for a reason is 100 times better than building for an opportunity.”
Photos by Chris House