Capture Your Travel Moments with a Localgrapher

Matej Slezak, Founder and CEO of Localgrapher, helps travelers capture their travel memories and helps photographers find new clients. 

Matej is part of the Travel Massive Prague chapter and is building up Localgrapher for passionate travelers who want to capture their unique travel memories and cherish them forever.

Right now they have about 100 pro-vacation photographers on 5 continents who are ready to capture candid memories for every traveler.

Here’s their story!

What inspired you to create Localgrapher?

I’m a professional photographer based in Prague. From time to time I get contacted by travelers who want to capture their vacations in Prague. I started to think about positioning myself as a vacation photographer for Prague, and then I asked myself: why just Prague? I took this basic idea to the test and have grown the idea into a global platform for others to benefit from as well.

From the beginning, we tried to profile Localgrapher as an alternative to selfies. Lately, we realized that both selfie and pro-vacation photos can be a great combination for every traveler.

Our most frequent clients are solo travelers, families, and couples on honeymoons. Lately, we see a big boom of secret proposal photo shoots.

How did you build your startup?

As a true startup – we built Localgrapher with almost no money but lots of passion. We didn’t have any money for promotion in the beginning as we spent everything for our first website.

We heavily rely on outstanding, friendly and memorable services which lead to word of mouth marketing. We have lots of returning clients which we hope is a proof that we’re good at this.

After that, we started to build our social media while following and a big base of great photographers which is the heart of our service.

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

I believe that professional (vacation) photography services will have an even bigger boom in next two years.

Yes, everyone has a phone with a great camera nowadays, but this will only highlight the gap between amateurs and pros. Everyone is documenting everything all the time but the quality of photography may not be very high. From time to time, everyone will need a professional photographer for a special occasion.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

Don’t wait. Start realizing your ideas right now because if you don’t,  someone else will.

As a startup, what benefits have you seen from being a part of Travel Massive meetups?

The most important benefit that comes to my mind is meeting other people from the travel industry. I was lucky to meet interesting people via this amazing network. We have gathered great business partnerships and we are still helping each other along. It’s a great pleasure to be a part of this big international family.

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. You can connect with Matej and Localgrapher on Travel Massive, Twitter and Facebook.