Last Foto Update of 2023

Overview of the next 6-8 months

Hey Everyone!

Here’s a quick update on what’s ahead for Foto over the next 6-8 months.

Mid-January 2024

We’ll announce the details for how to join the next round of Private Beta. Look for us to post about this multiple times here on our Substack and social media accounts. We will provide marketing materials for anyone who wants to help us spread the word about getting on the next Private Beta List.

Here is the list of items we need to get done before we open up Foto to a second round of Private Beta Testers.

🔴 Polish off Image Zoom Feature
🔴 Add Push Notifications
🔴 Add Discovery 2.0 Feature
🔴 Improve Performance and Speed

We will work on this list in order from top to bottom. Like any software company, we are juggling two main areas: new features and bugs/performance improvement.

Our strategy is to improve Zoom, which should be available in early January. Then, we will add Push Notifications because we feel it’s an essential feature to help foster community on Foto. Next, we will make it easier to find other people on Foto. This is critical to make Foto a valuable place to connect with other photographers, creatives, art directors, gallery owners, and industry professionals.

Last, we will improve the Performance and Speed of Foto as much as possible before adding more people.

Late-February 2024

We’ll launch open Foto back up to more Private Beta users. This will be the last time we open it up before we go public. We will be looking for more people to give us fresh feedback on Foto and collaborate to improve Foto before we open it up to the world.

Like the first round of Private Beta, we will collect and document all the fresh feedback from users. This will take us about a week after everyone starts exploring Foto for the first time.

After that, we will spend 1-2 months fixing a lot of bugs and further improving the performance and speed. We hope that Foto will feel very polished and smooth by the end of April.

Then, in May, we will direct our attention to any additional features required by Google and Apple. We’ll also be considering other features to ensure Foto is sustainable for the long term, which may include our first Pro Feature. This could be our Portfolio idea that can be unlocked for a monthly fee. We’ll either need to have this done before we open Foto to the public, or it will be the first thing we work on after going public.

Summer 2024

Our target for making Foto widely available to everyone is sometime in the summer of 2024. Realistically, I think this will happen in July or August. I believe June is too soon, and we won’t have everything built into Foto by then.

There is a good chance we will announce an Equity Crowdfunding Campaign after we go public. The funds raised from this will allow the Foto community to own shares in Foto, providing a chance for a return on investment many years from now. We will be using this capital to help cover some of our operating costs and hire more talent to improve Foto faster.

Thank you again for supporting Foto! We believe 2024 will be a huge year for us, and we’re excited to be on this journey with you. Your patience and understanding as we improve Foto is much appreciated. Progress will speed up in the 2nd half of 2024 after we start monetizing and raising capital.

Cheers,

Michael Howard

Co-Founder and CEO of Foto
fotoapp.co

---

You can support our work at Foto by becoming a paid subscriber for only $5/month. All paid subscribers will automatically be eligible for the next round of Private Beta.