In this Forbes Talks interview, Ben and Dan Silvertown, the co-founders of Lapse, discuss their social camera app and its unique approach to social media. They delve into the importance of authenticity in social media, where they aim to counteract the performative nature of current platforms by promoting genuine, unedited photography; the importance of user feedback versus maintaining a core vision, as they navigate the challenge of iterating based on user input while staying true to their original goals; and the focus on retention over rapid growth, emphasizing the need to build a strong network and create daily value for users before scaling aggressively.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Think if you can create value for users and back to our point about frequency on a daily basis,
00:05that's how you retain users.
00:10Hi everyone, we are here with Ben and Dan Silvertown, the co-founders of LAPS.
00:13Thank you both so much for joining me today.
00:16Thank you. Thanks for having us.
00:17So I'm super excited to talk about what you guys are building in the kind of social media,
00:21photography space, but I want to hear from your words first.
00:24What are you guys building today? Who are you guys? Give me like a 30 second rundown.
00:29Yeah, sure. So LAPS is a social camera app and it's connected to a friends only photo journal.
00:35And it's funny because we started working together actually when I was 13 and Ben was 11.
00:39So at the time I taught myself to build websites and I was very unartistic. And so I bullied Ben,
00:45who was like I said, 11 at the time, into learning a program called ReelDrawPro.
00:49So he could basically design the websites, which I would then build and sell online.
00:53I didn't even know he was selling them. So it was actually in the fundraising.
00:57We were talking about this story and Dan was saying,
00:58oh yeah, and I was actually selling the website. So I was like, what?
01:01So you were doing the work and not getting paid for it.
01:03It's like child slave labor.
01:06So you guys have obviously been entrepreneurial from a young age.
01:10When did you start LAPS? What was kind of the idea behind it?
01:12Yeah, so LAPS actually kind of, I guess the idea from LAPS came from,
01:17I was traveling in Vietnam in 2019 with a really good friend of mine called Tim.
01:22And he kind of realized that I was in one of the most beautiful places in the world
01:27and I wasn't taking any photos. And he was like, this is really strange. What are you doing?
01:30And it's because I'd actually tried taking some photos in the first couple of days.
01:33And I was like, just not doing this place any justice.
01:36I found myself living through my phone rather than actually just enjoying the moment.
01:40And he's obsessed with these point and shoot film cameras.
01:44And so he gave me one and he was like, just take photos of this and just see how you find it.
01:48And it kind of just made me fall in love with taking photos.
01:53Like I ended up shooting a whole bunch of photos I just never would have shot otherwise.
01:58The experience of actually being fully in the moment and then
02:02getting that amazing reveal at the end when you develop your photos
02:05was just a really special experience.
02:07And there's a lot of stuff from that film experience
02:10that just doesn't exist in modern photographer anymore.
02:12And that was kind of just kind of kickstarted this obsession,
02:15which I was hounding Dan about.
02:17And he's just like, I think that was probably one of the most amazing things
02:22that when you said, I'm going to come forward as a co-founder.
02:24And I think that's just a really special thing,
02:27especially the creative side of the brothers
02:31having the serious consultant side being like, this is a good idea.
02:38How do you guys find working together?
02:40Being brothers is one thing, but can you turn it off when you're then co-founders?
02:44How does it work?
02:46I think it gives us the ability to have a lot more kind of open debates,
02:52but also have like an underlying level of trust that you may not necessarily have
02:56if you don't have that family bond.
02:58Because I think ultimately we know, obviously,
03:01the most important thing is our family relationship and nothing comes above that.
03:06But that also provides them the platform for us actually to be able to...
03:09Because we do have very different viewpoints and ways of thinking,
03:12which is a complimentary thing,
03:14but also obviously gives rise sometimes to some heated product debates.
03:19How do you guys divide the workload?
03:20You maybe are more creative, you're on the business side of things.
03:23What does that look like on a practical level?
03:25It kind of varies.
03:26So I guess you could broadly say,
03:29kind of the quantitative and data side lies with me.
03:31And then the kind of qualitative vision and more design side lives with Ben.
03:37But in reality, the kind of two are very intermingled.
03:40It's like kind of the art and the science and you need the two together
03:43to build particularly the kind of product that we're building.
03:46What has been the process like from that initial idea when you were traveling,
03:50you realized like we need somewhere to share these sorts of photos
03:53or to take these sorts of photos from that initial idea
03:56to now having a full-fledged company around it?
03:58Can you walk me through what that process looked like?
04:01Yeah, I mean, I think actually probably one of the interesting things about...
04:04Because it starts as a camera wrap,
04:07but I think there's an underlying realization that
04:10actually if you look at our relationship with social media,
04:13probably over the last five years, it's really evolved.
04:16It's kind of changed from participants to now we're spectators.
04:22And I think you start to seeing in the design of all these platforms,
04:25they kind of end up all being the same thing.
04:27It's like a vertical, never-ending scrolling feed of videos.
04:31And I think there's this shift where we're now consuming more than ever,
04:40but actually even though the tools to create are easier than ever,
04:46there's now just more pressure than ever for that content to perform.
04:50And I think that's stopped a whole lot of people taking photos.
04:54But I think worse, it's actually created this sort of epidemic
04:56of anxiety and depression in young people.
04:59And so I think there's been this baseline of
05:01knowing this is kind of what the industry is like,
05:04and there needs to be a change.
05:06And this idea of actually just changing the way that people capture
05:10and removing that pressure inspired by film photography
05:13could actually be the baseline for creating a new social network.
05:16Definitely.
05:16And then from the business side of things,
05:18turning that ethos into then a company,
05:20how did you go about doing that?
05:21Yeah, it's interesting because we're both driven
05:23by very kind of different motivations.
05:24So Ben is obviously very on the kind of passion side
05:28and kind of lives and breathes the kind of purpose of the product.
05:32And for me, I get my joy from building large businesses.
05:36And I started my career as a consultant
05:39when I started then a bootstrap business, which we exited.
05:41And then we started working together.
05:44So for me, the kind of common thread through all of that
05:46has been a passion for building, agnostic of the industry.
05:51And again, I think that actually works to serve
05:53and serves to create a really healthy tension
05:56in the way that we think about product decisions.
05:58Because a lot of the time you have to think about
06:00the user versus the network.
06:02Because often, it's very easy to say we always build for the user.
06:05But actually, sometimes what's best for the user
06:07is to prioritize the network for a specific decision,
06:10which actually then, for instance, allows users
06:13to have more friends on the network,
06:14which then benefits the user in turn.
06:17And that kind of decision making,
06:19we get from that kind of complementary way of thinking.
06:21What exactly do you guys offer today?
06:23And how does that differ
06:24from when you kind of first started out?
06:25I mean, any business changes so much
06:27over a couple months time span,
06:31let alone like a couple of years.
06:32So can you walk me through what it looks like right now
06:34and what it used to look like?
06:35Yeah, I mean, for us, iterating very quickly
06:38is kind of at the heart of what we do.
06:39We do about three to four product releases
06:42to new app updates every single week.
06:45So super, super fast iterations.
06:49And a lot is changing.
06:51We're working on some really,
06:53really exciting things at the moment.
06:54We can't go into too much detail,
06:56obviously, given the nature of the industry
06:57and just how prevalent kind of copying is in the industry.
07:01But to give you an example of what's changed,
07:03maybe even over the last 12 months,
07:06the kind of feed and the consumption surface
07:08for how users consume content from their friends
07:11has changed two or three times and improved.
07:14The way people capture in new capture modes.
07:16So video, for instance, is rolling out as we speak.
07:20A new mode called burst mode,
07:21where you can take a series of kind of still photos
07:25that then get animated together has also come out.
07:30That's actually not in the last 12 months.
07:31That's probably the last kind of two months.
07:34Yeah, and I think actually in the very beginning,
07:36the version of the app was essentially
07:38kind of like a group disposable camera.
07:40So the idea was you would basically
07:42all be on the same roll of film.
07:43You'd all shoot and then the next morning,
07:45all these snaps would develop
07:46and you'd have that kind of hangover style moment.
07:48And what we realized was we launched it.
07:50Everybody loved the idea,
07:51but actually the most frequent users
07:53were actually using it in a very different way.
07:54They were using it to journal their everyday life.
07:57So they were using it not at parties
07:59and not sort of events that we expected to be used at.
08:02They were using it in kind of like
08:02everyday small little moments.
08:04And so we basically kind of in stealth
08:08transformed the product,
08:09took all the best bits that was working
08:10from version one of Lapse
08:12and we built a sort of secret product called Journal,
08:14which is now what Lapse is.
08:16So going through those different iterations,
08:18like you speak of kind of listening to
08:20what your users want out of the platform,
08:23how much do you listen to them
08:24versus stay true to like what you guys set out
08:27to build from the get-go?
08:28What does that conversation look like?
08:29Yeah, I mean, I think it changes all the time
08:33and I think that's part of the art
08:36and also the difficulty of this business
08:38is understanding when user feed,
08:42because I think the thing is a lot of people
08:44are really good expressing their problems,
08:46but not necessarily the solutions.
08:48And that's our job is to come up
08:49with the solutions to the problems.
08:50And it's trying to sort of sift between
08:53what people are saying
08:54and actually what people are feeling.
08:56And that really, really depends
08:59depending on what the thing is we're updating,
09:01what the thing is we're changing.
09:03Yeah, I also think particularly in consumer
09:05and then particularly in high frequency consumer,
09:09meaning kind of daily use cases,
09:11everyone has an opinion because it's so tangible.
09:13And so our parents will have an opinion,
09:16our friends have opinions,
09:17users will constantly be sending in their own opinions
09:20and you've got to kind of filter through all of the noise
09:23and kind of stay aligned to what we believe
09:26drives the best value for users
09:28and then focus on that.
09:29And sometimes that does align
09:30with what users are asking for
09:32and sometimes it doesn't directly correlate.
09:34Right, in those three to six iterations
09:38in very short periods of time,
09:39like you're saying,
09:40what are you exactly iterating on?
09:41What's something that you feel
09:42like you are constantly having to innovate on
09:44or change or just take a second look at?
09:47I guess probably what you just raised there, Dan,
09:49was actually something I think we didn't appreciate
09:53it's going into building consumer social
09:56was the frequency of the product matters a lot.
10:00Again, as I said, in the very early version of the app,
10:02we were building essentially for events, right?
10:04That happened maybe once a week, once every two weeks.
10:07And if you're trying to build an app
10:10that becomes an integral part of someone's life,
10:12that just isn't frequent enough.
10:13People will just kind of forget,
10:14especially because what we're going for
10:16is a replacement to the camera, right?
10:18Like we're trying to rebuild that habit
10:20of you going to the Apple camera
10:21or you going to another camera
10:23and change that to be, I'm going to take this on laps.
10:26And the requirement of that
10:28is you just need to have really high frequency.
10:30You know, so you are top of mind
10:32for when someone goes to take a picture.
10:34You mentioned too that the users
10:36that you are now seeing a lot on the platform
10:40are people who are using it in their day-to-day lives,
10:41not necessarily like the user that you thought initially.
10:44What does the demographic of users look like today?
10:46Is there an age? Is there a region?
10:48Who is really on laps right now?
10:51Yeah, there's a strong bias towards Gen Z
10:53and a strong bias towards females,
10:56which is actually really exciting for us
10:57because I think if you look at
10:59most of the large staple social platforms,
11:01the early adopter cohort was young females at the time.
11:06The other really exciting thing we're seeing
11:07is that a third of those users
11:09are actually taking more photos on laps
11:11than they are on their naked camera
11:13from the kind of research and surveys that we've done,
11:15which is, I think, really exciting
11:17because it shows that we're actually becoming
11:19the default camera for that generation.
11:21How do you think Gen Z has changed social media?
11:23I mean, there have been like so many changes
11:26with the young generation,
11:27but what are you guys seeing
11:28as like the most prominent differences?
11:31Yeah, I think you kind of see this bifurcation
11:34between the social side and the media side.
11:36The video platforms and the platforms
11:39which are putting a heavier emphasis on video,
11:42and when I say video,
11:42I mean more kind of like creator-led video
11:45rather than just moving image.
11:49It's kind of more becoming entertainment
11:51and the kind of media side,
11:53but less social and particularly less friends focused.
11:55And then on the kind of friends and social side,
11:59you're seeing people wanting more authenticity.
12:02So rather than kind of what we had previously,
12:05which was the kind of intermingling of media and social
12:08in this kind of wrapped up curated aspect,
12:10you're seeing creators take the kind of entertainment
12:13and consumption side,
12:14but then conversely a desire for more authenticity
12:18at the social end.
12:19What do you think authenticity means like in practice?
12:22Because I think it's like such a buzzword
12:24that's thrown around and brands say it
12:26and creators say it and celebrities say it.
12:29And in a lot of ways, it's like,
12:30well, that's not really,
12:31you can't be authentic if you're talking about it too much.
12:34You know what I mean?
12:34So in your eyes, what does that mean?
12:36How does it kind of manifest on somewhere like Lapps?
12:39Yeah, I think for me,
12:41authenticity is actually kind of embedded
12:43in the culture of the app.
12:44I think if you think about the way people share,
12:47a lot of it is to do with the audience
12:50and audiences in traditional social networks have ballooned
12:54and because it's, you know,
12:56they're slowly shifting to be more creator dominated.
12:59And so with that, the pressure goes up
13:01and then suddenly everything feels not like
13:03it needs to be way more curated.
13:05And what's happened is, as Dan was saying,
13:07the kind of more social side of just friends content,
13:10more casual sharing has kind of got squeezed out.
13:13And this is the thing that I kind of think about a lot
13:16is we were kind of lucky
13:18and we kind of got the glory days of social media
13:20where it's like we had MySpace and Bebo
13:23and I'm showing my age now,
13:24but, you know, all these social networks
13:26where it was like genuinely a really fun common space
13:28where you'd log on and your friends were there
13:30and that has gone
13:32and actually has not been experienced by a lot of Gen Z
13:34because all they're used to is TikTok
13:37and other apps that are basically
13:40just trying to replicate that same experience.
13:43And so that's the really exciting thing for us
13:45is I think there's that space
13:47which is not currently served by anyone.
13:49There's so much that's changed in the social media space
13:53and the creative space over the last couple of years.
13:55Is there anything that you guys expect to change
13:57within the next couple of months or years
13:59that you're really prepared
14:00to kind of get ahead of the curve on?
14:02So I wonder if the question in the question there
14:05is around how AI is changing things
14:07because we're often asked about how are you incorporating
14:09or looking at AI in LAPS
14:11and actually our answer to that is maybe quite surprising
14:13because we actually think we're moving
14:15in an orthogonal direction to generative AI
14:18and that ties into the authenticity point
14:20that I was making earlier
14:22because as more and more generative AI content
14:25makes its way onto social networks,
14:27we're actually a space where everything you see on LAPS
14:30has been captured on LAPS,
14:32has not been edited and is genuinely proof of reality
14:35of what that person is doing.
14:37And so I think as you can trust less and less
14:40what you see on other platforms,
14:41we're actually really proud and excited
14:43that LAPS remains an area where you know
14:45that what you see is something that actually happened.
14:48How are you guys going about retaining your users?
14:51Because I think that there have been a lot of social platforms
14:54in the past couple of years
14:56that kind of had the same ethos of like being really real,
14:59being really in the moment
15:00and then kind of fell off
15:01and people just stopped using them.
15:03How are you guys preventing that from happening?
15:05Yeah, I think the main thing is just
15:07how do we create value for users?
15:10I think if you can create value for users
15:12and back to our point about frequency on a daily basis,
15:15that's how you retain users.
15:17And I think if we stay laser focused
15:20and we have been incredibly focused
15:21over the, you know, since our fundraiser a year ago,
15:24specifically on retention,
15:25we've very purposely been like,
15:27we don't want to grow right now
15:29and what we want to do is focus on,
15:31because it's very easy to sort of run away with growth
15:34and it actually masks a lot of the underlying problems
15:36in the network.
15:37And I think, you know,
15:39it's something that it's a very easy trap to fall into
15:41and we have to be quite strict with ourselves
15:43of being like, actually, it's really important
15:44we focus on making sure the underlying mechanics
15:47of the network work before we start to grow.
15:49And I'd say the interesting dynamics
15:50of our business model
15:51and actually those in social generally
15:53are that your biggest costs
15:54are actually not your people or fixed overheads.
15:58It's actually the server costs,
15:59which is incredibly variable costs,
16:00obviously based on user base.
16:02And so growing too quickly
16:05before you are ready there and there with retention
16:09is actually the fastest way to run out of money.
16:11And so you need to basically balance
16:14the kind of cash you have available
16:15because a lot of these platforms
16:16obviously don't monetize until a lot later
16:18with the right time to kind of start growing
16:22and kind of grow again
16:24so that you don't exhaust all of your cash
16:26in the pursuit of growth
16:27and actually forget to realize
16:30that if you look at cohort levels
16:31from the earlier cohorts,
16:32you're actually losing those users.
16:34Yeah. Are you guys monetizing right now?
16:36We're not.
16:36And it's not something that's on the roadmap
16:39for a while for us.
16:40The full focus is on user retention
16:43and in creating an amazing product for those users.
16:46And I think that's a really common thread
16:48through like consumer products and consumer social,
16:50but it has been a really tough past couple of years,
16:53especially for like funding into consumer products.
16:55What have your guys' experiences been like
16:57as this market has fluctuated?
16:59How are you kind of like,
17:00you know, continuing to move forward
17:02knowing that a lot of the market
17:03is not succeeding right now?
17:06Yeah, I think we're in quite an interesting space.
17:08So our last fundraise was about a year ago now.
17:12And I think somewhat bucked the trend,
17:14particularly for kind of companies
17:16that are not in the AI space
17:17and are really not touching AI
17:19on the kind of front end.
17:22And I think it's because the opportunity
17:25within consumer social is so large.
17:27If you look at all of the biggest internet companies,
17:29they're all consumer focused,
17:31and actually many of them are social media.
17:34And so I think that for us has proven
17:38to be an amazing platform to kind of raise from
17:41and has allowed us basically to do fundraisers
17:44that definitely wouldn't have been possible
17:45in any other sectors,
17:46probably aside from AI.
17:48How are you guys attracting new users today?
17:51What's your marketing strategy?
17:52How are you reaching these young girls
17:54and other users of the platform?
17:57Today it's 100% organic.
17:59So about half of our signups
18:02come from word of mouth and kind of spread.
18:04And then half of them come from people inviting
18:06through the app itself.
18:09Like we said, there's I think a lot of apps out there
18:12that are overspending in a dangerous way
18:15that they probably haven't quite yet realized.
18:18And kind of spending money potentially
18:20before the product is ready.
18:21Definitely.
18:22From the creative side of things,
18:24you know, everything from like the visuals
18:26to the types of content that's curated on the platform
18:28to how you are, you know,
18:29sharing news about it with potential users.
18:32How is it different from what else exists today?
18:34That's a really good question.
18:36I think a big part of it is actually leaning
18:38into why we're different.
18:39I think it was really interesting in one of our,
18:41I think it was one of our seed investment rounds.
18:45We had a message and it was like,
18:46the thing I love about it is just feels so different
18:48to what currently exists.
18:49And that's from the aesthetic, from the branding.
18:51We're actually moving very much away
18:52from kind of the Silicon Valley style product,
18:55which I think a lot of products look like now.
18:57And we're leaning more in towards
18:59this kind of slightly analog,
19:01slightly more kind of inspired by real film.
19:05And that takes place in the UI,
19:07takes place in the marketing.
19:08And it's something that I think we need
19:10to constantly look at every single touch point
19:12of what we're building
19:13and making sure that kind of feels cohesive.
19:15And there's something like nostalgic about it, correct?
19:17And I think that's something
19:18that a lot of young people today
19:19are really tapping into.
19:21Everything from fashion trends
19:23to other sorts of photo apps and things like that.
19:25How much are you leaning into what's old versus what's new?
19:28Totally, totally.
19:29And I think that's what's so fascinating
19:31is there's also, if you think about film,
19:33it's actually nostalgia for a time
19:34that we didn't really necessarily live through.
19:36I didn't use a film camera when I was younger.
19:39I used it fairly recently.
19:41And I think it says a lot
19:42about how visual style and culture
19:45can create these counter movements.
19:47And I think this is, again,
19:49why I think we've been so successful
19:51is we've kind of capitalized off the fact
19:52that everyone's phones create a very certain type of image
19:57that is essentially dictated by Apple.
19:59And people are now getting a bit fed up with that
20:01because it's become associated
20:02with this era of hyper control on Instagram
20:06and everything is perfect.
20:08And so people are kind of rebelling against that.
20:10And that is, I think,
20:11why the film aesthetic is kind of so popular at the moment.
20:15My last question for you guys,
20:16what is next for you guys, the company,
20:19with regards to how much is changing in this space?
20:22Like we've been talking about,
20:23AI is coming into play,
20:24social media changes by the minute.
20:26What's next for Lapse?
20:28What's next is what the kind of priority has always been,
20:31which is building the best possible product for users,
20:33staying laser laser focused on that
20:35and continuing to iterate and build an amazing product.
20:39And how about from the creative side of things,
20:41anything you're excited about?
20:42I think the thing is,
20:43well, the thing that has always driven Lapse
20:44is how do you make people fall back in love
20:46with taking photos?
20:48And for me, it's just keeping chipping away on that goal
20:52and becoming the go-to camera for a lot of people.
20:55Yeah, I love it.
20:56Well, thank you both so much for taking the time
20:57to chat with me today.