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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1477631
E N T R E P R E N E U R O F T H E Y E A R 2 0 2 2 TANYA GOEHRING I 'm halfway through a con- versation with the found- ers of Pixieset and Phoebe Jiang has already fact-checked her co-founder and husband. Twice. BCBusiness can't thank Jiang enough for doing our work for us as she politely reminds Simon Wong that the company's first employee was hired in 2015 and it raised its Series A funding round and acquired a European company in 2021. "That's why we're part- ners," says Wong with a big smile after the second correc- tion. But really, who can blame him for being a little hazy on the details—especially since the company has grown from some 35 people in 2020 to around 150 today. Pixieset was founded in 2013 by Jiang, a business ad- ministration grad and former bank employee, and Wong, a software developer, to help users upload and send photos. The company went through what Wong calls a "journey of growing sustainably" until the pandemic hit. "Phoebe and I asked our- selves if we should take more risks," recalls Wong. "The busi- ness had grown beyond what we had envisioned and it had so much potential. We owed it to our users and employees to take it bigger so that we could create more value for the pho- tography industry." So it was then that the com- pany raised money for the first time and acquired Moldova- F U N F A C T S NA M E ON E T H I NG P E OP L E WOU L D B E S U R P R I S E D T O L E A R N A B OU T YOU We both love the TV show Survivor. HOW WOU L D YOU DE S C R I B E YOU R L E A DE R S H I P ST Y L E ? Authentic leadership. As leaders, we believe in being genuine, self-aware and transparent. W H AT BU S I N E S S - P E R S ON D O YOU MO ST A DM I R E ? Steve Jobs. His obses- sion with creating perfect products inspired many of our product philosophies. W H AT D O YOU D O T O R E L A X / U N W I N D ? Walk in the woods. W I N N E R S Phoebe Jiang + Simon Wong F O U N D E R S , P I X I E S E T was unimaginable before COV- ID," says Jiang. "But because of that experience, we were like, yeah, we can work remotely. Same with raising the money. We raised that round and closed the deal without meet- ing the investors in-person—a leap of faith." To date, some 800,000 pho- tographers have used Pixieset, and the company, along with its cofounders, keeps evolving. "When we started we didn't even know there were 800,000 photographers in the world," says Jiang with a laugh. But while the mission at the start was to make it easier on the next Annie Leibovitz, that goal has now changed to lifting up the entire industry. According to the couple, the first five years were focused on one thing: creating a product called Client Gallery, which helps photographers deliver photos. Then, five years ago, 52 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 Pixieset became an all-in-one platform for photographers that helped build their websites with an e-commerce solution and built-in CRM capabilities that helps clients get paid and sign contracts. Now the company is at another turning point. "Can we grow the professional pho- tography industry in a way that we can get people to hire more photographers and to based Flothemes, a WordPress website designer for photogra- phers. That move meant that Pixieset almost doubled its staff overnight. "Acquiring [Flothemes], where they were fully remote, "When you're always on the same page, you can talk about business and make decisions quickly. Sometimes we say it's our secret weapon, because we can always be so aligned in terms of our company and the direction of it."