Matterport’s 3-D Scanner Faces Marketing Challenge

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:20:18 +0000

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The FINANCIAL — Matterport, a Y Combinator graduate that just raised $5.6 million in
Series A funding to produce a scanner that makes 3D models of interior
spaces more cheaply and much more quickly than before, has a novel
technology opening new possibilities in real estate, remodeling and
construction.

But it also has a classic problem–convincing potential buyers that a new type of product is worth both the money and changing the way they usually do business.

“This is an answer in search of a problem,” said Willy Shih, professor at Harvard Business School specializing in manufacturing and product development. Shih looked at Matterport briefly, at the request of a reporter, and said that he is in general very positive on the technology’s potential, but that the company will need to quickly find customers that will be testing the product and help the company refine it, something that Matterport has already started doing with prototypes.

Matt Bell, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said that Matterport’s initial customers would be real-estate photographers. “This is the next tool that they will need to have,” he said of the product, which will cost about as much as a good DSLR camera.

But San Francisco Bay Area real-estate photographer Bryce Greenfield, who was told about the technology by a reporter, said, “I don’t think I am interested.” For him, an investment of this kind would only be warranted if real estate agents really started demanding the service, and he’s skeptical of that.

As The Wall Street Journal said, video, for example, never took off even in high-end real estate listings, even though some people thought that the visual capabilities of video reels would be effective marketing tools. “Most agents are very tight with their purse strings,” said Greenfield. He said real-estate marketing has been pretty static for a while, with photographs accompanying listings.

Matterport’s technology is different from video, because it offers precise measurements, and soon enough, the company plans to also offer interactivity, so that besides a virtual walk through a space, one will be able to add and remove objects. The company hopes to first make money by selling the scanners, and then to also lock in monthly subscriptions from users for its service of creating the 3D models and hosting them online.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Matterport’s scanner incorporates the same sensors used in Microsoft ’s Kinect platform, which runs on the XBox to visualize users’ movements. The device, which is controlled via an Apple iPad, takes several 3D scans of an interior space that are sent to Matterport. The company uses its software algorithms to process all the information and stitch together a full 3D model of the space in minutes.

Matterport will rely on resellers, as well as companies like recently launched Floored that will buy the scanners and create sales channels on their own.

Bell said that the company doesn’t have to sell a huge number of scanners to turn a profit. In a few years, he hopes that the hardware part of the business will go away completely, he said. At that time, he hopes that 3D sensor technology will become small and cheap enough to be incorporated into smartphones and tablets, so the question of an upfront investment will go away, and the company will become a purely software and services provider.

Article source: http://finchannel.com/Main_News/B_Schools/124704_Matterport%E2%80%99s_3-D_Scanner_Faces_Marketing_Challenge/

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Matterport’s 3-D Scanner Faces Marketing Challenge