In this episode
Andrew Laffoon, CEO and co-founder of Mixbook, explains how a 20-year-old photo book company uses AI throughout its product while keeping the phrase “AI” out of all customer-facing messaging. He and host Greg Kihlström cover what it means to build a product customers intend to keep for decades: which parts of the company should never change, how Mixbook’s Story Mode uses a chat to keep the customer as the author, why the company weights Net Promoter Score above speed-to-checkout, and what Mixbook is launching beyond printed books.
Key takeaways
- None of Mixbook’s customer-facing messaging uses the phrase “AI.” Laffoon says he does not believe in AI as a generic concept. Mixbook has used algorithms to build books since it launched 20 years ago and described that feature as “we can auto flow your photo book for you.”
- Start with the customer problem and work backwards. Laffoon contrasts this with picking up a new technology and trying it on everything. He still makes room for R&D, but frames product work as the right tool for the right job.
- Mission and values are the permanent layer; products and strategies are not. Asked what should still be true if Mixbook exists in 100 years, Laffoon names the mission and the core values, and says the products and strategies might change a lot.
- Craftsmanship cannot be measured on the P&L in the short term. Laffoon says that is why it has to be a value the company practices, and why the working answer is to keep improving.
- The photo problem is signal versus noise. Laffoon cites a figure of roughly 98% of time in the Photos app being spent on photos from the last seven days, and says Mixbook’s advantage is that it works with the content people care most about.
- Story Mode starts with a chat because users are not good at writing prompts. The conversation works as a filter. A trip to Greece becomes a trip to Greece celebrating a specific milestone, and that specificity lets Mixbook choose the right photos.
- Optimizing only for speed cost Mixbook the soul of an earlier product. Laffoon says its first mobile product, about 15 years ago, was focused on time and lost what makes the product matter. He calls Mixbook “a vehicle for communicating love.”
- NPS matters more than speed metrics. Mixbook measures time to create, time to order and conversion, but looks more at Net Promoter Score. Laffoon calls customers every week to hear whether they still talk about “the big stuff.”
- Mixbook is expanding from books to digital stories. Laffoon describes free on-device memory organization and a way to turn stories into movies, digital art and shareable interactive stories.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Introduction: when the memory is the product
- 01:43 — Andrew Laffoon’s background and 20 years of Mixbook
- 02:17 — What Mixbook does and its mission
- 03:18 — The case for permanence: competing for a place on the shelf
- 05:53 — Photo overload and finding signal in the noise
- 08:01 — Curation with technology: how Story Mode starts with a chat
- 10:28 — Why Mixbook’s customer messaging never says “AI”
- 12:38 — Measuring success when the process is not meant to be fast
- 16:20 — Craftsmanship, quality and products designed for obsolescence
- 18:31 — What is next: on-device memory organization and digital stories
- 21:45 — What we will be talking about a year from now
- 22:42 — How Andrew Laffoon stays agile
What should still be true about a company in 100 years
Laffoon starts from first principles: if Mixbook earns the right to exist 100 years from now, what should remain true? His answer is the mission, which he roots in human nature, and the company’s core values. Products and strategies sit in a different category and “might change a lot.” He ties the physical product to the same logic. People are physical, and they will want to show these stories to their children and grandchildren.
Why craftsmanship is the closest thing to permanence
Craftsmanship is one of Mixbook’s core values, and Laffoon describes it as hard to value economically. You cannot plug it into an algorithm and optimize it, beyond continuously improving things like reprint rates and quality. Later in the conversation he returns to the point: because you cannot measure the short-term impact of craftsmanship on the P&L, it has to be a value that is believed and practiced, and the practical response is to always improve. He contrasts this with products that are designed for obsolescence, an approach he says he fundamentally disagrees with.
Why Mixbook does not say “AI” to customers
Laffoon points out that none of Mixbook’s customer-facing messaging contains the phrase “AI,” and that this is intentional. When the company launched 20 years ago it had its own statistical algorithm for making books from photo metadata, and it described the result as auto-flowing your photo book. The company’s habit is to start with the customer and work backwards from the problem. He says many of the problems Mixbook set out to solve 20 years ago are still unsolved, and that only now can it apply AI to a camera roll and make the whole book, including captions.
How Story Mode keeps the customer as the author
Some curation problems can be solved mathematically, such as picking the best one or two shots from a run of group photos. Knowing which photos matter to a person is harder, which is why Laffoon calls user agency critical. In Story Mode the user starts with a chat, and the chat acts as a filter: the story is not “I took a trip to Greece” but why the trip mattered. Because users are not good at writing prompts, Mixbook effectively interviews them. Behind that, the company has been training algorithms to work out who and what is important in a person’s photo library, including habits and hobbies the person may not have noticed.
What Mixbook learned from optimizing for speed
Asked how to optimize a process that is not meant to be fast, Laffoon says the question hits close to a past struggle. Mixbook’s first mobile product, launched about 15 years ago, focused on time, and “the soul of the product actually got a bit lost.” Part of making a book the traditional way is a flow state of reminiscing and writing, and he says shortcutting that loses something major. He compares it to sleep and memory: the brain does not form memories without sleep, and making a book is the time when memories and perspective get reworked.
How Mixbook measures a product meant to last
Mixbook does measure time to create, time to order and conversion. Laffoon says the company looks more at other metrics, Net Promoter Score in particular, to judge whether people are getting satisfaction from the process. He admits he does not have a perfect measure for whether making a book changed someone’s perspective. That gap is the reason he calls customers every week.
What comes after the photo book
Laffoon frames the roadmap as problems to solve, and the first is that most people’s photos are a mess. He describes free on-device memory organization that finds a person’s best memories and stories, so that trips, a wedding or a child’s early years are already organized when the app opens. Not every story is a book, so Mixbook is also adding ways to turn stories into movies, digital art and shareable interactive stories for family who live far away. He says adding a digital side to the business is something he has wanted to do for 20 years.
FAQ
Why doesn’t Mixbook use the term AI in its customer messaging? Andrew Laffoon says he does not believe in AI as a generic concept, so none of Mixbook’s customer-facing messaging uses the phrase. Mixbook names the customer benefit instead: its original statistical algorithm from 20 years ago was described as auto-flowing your photo book, not as AI.
What is Mixbook’s Story Mode? Story Mode is a Mixbook product in which the user starts with a chat. The conversation acts as a filter: the more specific the user is about what a trip or event meant, the better Mixbook can pick the photos that tell that story.
How does Mixbook measure success when making a photo book is not meant to be fast? Mixbook tracks time to create, time to order and conversion, but Laffoon says it looks more at Net Promoter Score to see whether people are getting satisfaction from the process. He also calls customers every week.
What does designing for permanence mean at Mixbook? Laffoon separates what should still be true in 100 years, the mission and the core values, from products and strategies, which can change a lot. He describes craftsmanship, one of Mixbook’s core values, as the closest thing to permanence.
What is Mixbook building beyond photo books? In the episode Laffoon describes free on-device memory organization that finds a person’s best memories and stories, and a way to turn those stories into movies, digital art and shareable interactive stories for family and friends.
About Andrew Laffoon
Andrew Laffoon is the CEO and co‑founder of Mixbook, a leading photo storytelling platform that helps people transform meaningful moments into beautifully crafted memories. Since founding the company in 2006, he has led Mixbook’s growth into a creative technology platform that makes it easier for people to tell, preserve, and share their stories.
Andrew brings nearly three decades of experience in software development, product design, and entrepreneurship. His career began in the earliest days of the web, when he founded a web consultancy while still in high school. Prior to Mixbook, he built deep, cross‑functional expertise across engineering, design, operations, and go‑to‑market leadership.
In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Andrew has been deeply engaged in education and community leadership. He has served as a Lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology since 2012 and was a member of the UC Berkeley Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) Advisory Board from 2015 to 2025. He is also the Founding Board Chair of the Bay Area Center for Faith, Work and Tech, helping explore the intersection of purpose, vocation, and innovation.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. We spend a lot of time asking how brands can be memorable. We spend almost none asking what happens when the memory is the product. Agility gets talked about as moving fast with new tools. It’s really the ability to change repeatedly without losing what makes you recognizable, and what gets harder when what you sell is something a customer plans to keep for 20 years. Today we’re going to talk about why designing for permanence is a strategic choice, not a nostalgic one, getting specific about what AI is actually doing inside a creative product and where the customer stays the author, and what has to hold steady across a brand as volume, automation, and channels all multiply. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Andrew Laffoon, CEO and co-founder at Mixbook. Andrew, welcome
[00:01:34] Andrew Laffoon: Thanks Greg, glad to be here.
[00:01:35] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to, to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Mixbook?
[00:01:43] Andrew Laffoon: Yeah. I started this company 20 years ago, if you can believe it. We got this little, the swag to prove it.
[00:01:48] Andrew Laffoon: It just came out. And before that, I was kind of engineer, developer, started a business in high school building websites for other people. And I, I’ve really caught the vision of the internet and how big it could be and could change the world. And so coming out of college, I knew I wanted to start something. And, and Mixbook is the product we started.
[00:02:09] Greg Kihlström: Love it. Love it. And, and for those that might not be as familiar, what is Mixbook, who you’re primarily, serving, what’s the core mission, all that?
[00:02:17] Andrew Laffoon: Yes, yes. We’re known today for photo books, so I’ll kind of give a quick backstory, right?
[00:02:23] Andrew Laffoon: In college, I went to UC Berkeley. My co-founder and I were both engineers, and we were… Our, on our minds was this idea of can we democratize all the things? How do we take the power that’s in the hands of a few and enable everyone to do it? And for us, that thing was storytelling. Everyone has stories. Everyone is making memories. But we spend so much of our life watching other people’s stories. Do we actually get a chance to tell our own? And it’s very hard to do. So our mission really over the last 20 years is, you can think about it as stories that bring people together. The mission really, like the core language of it is empower people to be creative and connect deeply with the ones they love, and we do that through stories. That’s what we do. We’re known today through ph- for photo books. That’s, that’s what we’re known for. We try to make it super easy. And
[00:03:08] Andrew Laffoon: yet, not only is it easy and convenient, your story’s actually there. So you can customize every aspect. You can use AI, in fact, to do it with a prompt.
[00:03:18] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Nice. Love it. So yeah, let, let’s dive in here, and I wanna start by just talking about the, the, the case for permanence in a world that is very focused on the now, the fleeting, the, the, the latest eight seconds, all, all of that kinda stuff, right? So, as, a lot of consumer brands are optimizing for that next impression in a feed, but you’re competing for a spot on somebody’s shelf for the next 20-plus years, right? So what does that time horizon actually change about how you run a business? And, what are you willing to be slower about, and what do you, maybe refuse to optimize to that, like, microsecond kind of pace that, that
[00:04:03] Greg Kihlström: many companies are at?
[00:04:05] Andrew Laffoon: Yep. Yep, yep. the craving for permanence is not new, obviously, right? When you look at, throughout human history, it’s something-
[00:04:12] Greg Kihlström: Of course
[00:04:12] Andrew Laffoon: … we all crave because our lives are inherently impermanent. And so I think when I think about our business, kind of starting from first principles, right? Like, what always needs to be true? What… If I think about 100 years from now, what should still remain true about-
[00:04:29] Andrew Laffoon: … the company? If we somehow earn the right to exist 100 years from now-
[00:04:33] Andrew Laffoon: … the mission is unchanging ’cause it’s rooted in something in human nature. The values, right? We operate in a set of core values. Those are unchanging. The products, the strategies might change a lot, right? And if I think about our product, interesting, one thing that’s probably not changing about humans, I sure hope not, is the fact that we’re physical.
[00:04:52] Andrew Laffoon: And we’re gonna wanna show these stories to our kids. I’m gonna wanna show these stories to my grandkids. And if, one day when I’m gone, I’m hopeful that some of these things will be things that live beyond me, right? These are stories that otherwise get lost. and that’s why people look, go to Ancestry. That’s why people go to all these other things. So I think for us, the permanence of the product, the quality of the product, right? That’s why one of our core values is craftsmanship. And I think craftsmanship is something that’s hard to economically value. You can’t, like, plug that into an algorithm and say-
[00:05:25] Andrew Laffoon: … optimize it, other than the concept of continuously improving, right? If you’re in a manufacturing environment, you’re always improving. You’re always figuring out, how do I move that target variable? How do I impro- reduce reprints? How do I increase quality? How do I increase, right? So I think, but I think craftsmanship is that… To me, that’s the closest thing to permanence, where you’re building something that stands the test of time because you poured your love and your care into it. I would say that’s the essence of what’s permanent for us.
[00:05:53] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and I think the, one of, one of the challenges is people are generating, they’re generating more images in a month than their parents did in a decade. And, that doesn’t… I can’t imagine that slowing, right? we, we seem to be on a, on a trajectory here. Um- A lot of that, though, as opposed to some of those pictures that we have framed or in, in, in books here and there, never gets looked at more than, more than once, you know?
[00:06:22] Greg Kihlström: So, what’s the, what’s the real challenge here? is, is it-
[00:06:34] Andrew Laffoon: Yep. Yeah, I, I think it’s interesting because the weird side effect of the information revolution is information overload.
[00:06:42] Andrew Laffoon: You’ve got this paradox of choice, and it’s, it’s not just with your photos, but your photos in some ways are almost the most extreme aspect of it. Because something like, 98% of the time spent in the Photos app is on photos in the last seven days. Like-
[00:06:58] Andrew Laffoon: … the fact, the ability to go back and find the signal from the noise is just so hard. And to your point, our grandparents had not this problem. For them, getting one photo actually cost substantial money.
[00:07:09] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:07:10] Andrew Laffoon: And so those photos are on the wall. Those things are pressured air- treasured heirlooms. So I, I d- I do think it’s, like, a fundamental problem that, humanity hasn’t really evolved-
[00:07:20] Andrew Laffoon: … well and to handle this like, whoa, ridiculous sensory overload. And what happens is the people who hack dopamine the best win.
[00:07:28] Andrew Laffoon: And so we’re competing-
[00:07:30] Greg Kihlström: Right
[00:07:30] Andrew Laffoon: … with, in a way, an unfair advantage, which is we actually have the content that you care most about. It’s just, can we help you find that particular, the signal content, and then turn it into something that matters and that tells a story that is meaningful?
[00:07:50] Andrew Laffoon: And that’s, I think, the challenge, right? You have this, the opportunity’s there, it’s really clear, but the gap in the ability to deliver on that is what’s hard. And so of course, that’s where we, that’s where we come in.
[00:08:01] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, and I, I think, yeah, that, I think that’s where the, there’s a, there’s a few, there’s a judgment aspect of, d- are we, are we losing or retaining the ability to truly be able to know, okay, this is a moment that… like, there, there’s some obvious things like weddings and children being born and, and things like that that we’re probably gonna always bookmark and stuff. But, how do you, how can you use technology to also help you fi- figure out and curate, for lack of a better term?
[00:08:34] Andrew Laffoon: Yep, yep. there’s a lot there, as you could imagine.
[00:08:36] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. [laughs]
[00:08:37] Andrew Laffoon: and I do think the miracle of LLMs is extremely helpful here. but there’s also longstanding work that is helpful, right? So for example, if you’re like me, when you’re taking group photos, you’re taking a lot of photos.
[00:08:51] Andrew Laffoon: Guess what? You’re, you’re probably not gonna use all those photos.
[00:08:53] Andrew Laffoon: You’re gonna use one.
[00:08:54] Greg Kihlström: [laughs]
[00:08:54] Andrew Laffoon: Or maybe two, right? Maybe you’ll use the, the one of everyone more, like, regularly smiling, and then the silly one, right?
[00:09:00] Greg Kihlström: Right, right.
[00:09:00] Andrew Laffoon: And so for those kind of problems, you can kind of mathematically solve them. When it comes to-
[00:09:05] Andrew Laffoon: … understanding what photos are important to a user, that’s harder. And it’s one of the reasons, of course, why user agency is super critical, and why I actually think, in our new, we just launched a product called Story Mode where the user starts with a chat. And that’s actually super important, because the chat is actually a filter-
[00:09:22] Greg Kihlström: Mm
[00:09:22] Andrew Laffoon: … for then going and saying, “Okay, your narrative is not just I took a trip to Greece. It’s I took a trip to Greece celebrating this important milestone.”
[00:09:32] Andrew Laffoon: “And here’s what the meaning of the trip was, and here’s why it was so special.” And the more you give that specificity, the more we can actually pick out the photos. And, again, the user, users are not good at writing prompts. [laughs] So-
[00:09:46] Andrew Laffoon: … you kinda have to interview them, and in a s- a, a very easy way, and then we can actually get, do a really good job. And so what we’ve been doing is, behind the scenes, really training a set of algorithms to go and now start to understand what’s important in your life, who’s important in your life. And you’d be surprised with the photo, with the photo library how much we can just figure out even without a prompt.
[00:10:10] Andrew Laffoon: We can figure out a lot of who are the people who matter, what are the moments that mattered, what are the ha- habits, what are the hobbies that even you yourself might not be aware of.
[00:10:19] Andrew Laffoon: And so I think that is actually where we can come in and really help-
[00:10:24] Andrew Laffoon: … by applying modern technology in a relatively seamless way.
[00:10:28] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I think, A- AI is a, a term that… I mean, there, there’s lots of subcomponents of that and, there, there’s lots of, some, some of it can be speeding things up. Some of it can be doing what you’re sa- parsing large amounts of, of information, finding patterns, all, there’s all sorts of things that kind of fall under that umbrella.
[00:10:50] Greg Kihlström: Like, as a, as an organization, how do you, how do you get away from just kinda lumping it all into, there, I feel like there’s so many companies that just, like, slap AI on their product, and what even is that? [laughs] So, like, how do you, how do you make the distinction of let’s use the right tool for the right job?
[00:11:08] Andrew Laffoon: Right. You, you may notice, by the way, none of our customer-facing messaging has the phrase AI ever.
[00:11:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:14] Andrew Laffoon: And we kind of intentionally do that because AI, I don’t believe in AI as a generic concept. And-
[00:11:22] Andrew Laffoon: … we’ve been using AI since the beginning. Like, when we launched the company 20 years ago, we had our own algorithm for making books.
[00:11:30] Andrew Laffoon: It was statistical based. It was using primarily photo metadata, and it, relatively simplistic for what it did. AI, right?
[00:11:40] Andrew Laffoon: But even then, we never called that AI. What we said is, “We can auto flow your photo book for you,” right?
[00:11:45] Greg Kihlström: Mm. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:46] Andrew Laffoon: And we were the first to, to create that. And so I always think it’s, it’s part of our DNA as a company, start with the customer and work backwards. Start with what’s the customer problem we’re trying to solve, can we solve it. As opposed to, ooh, I have this shiny new technology. Let’s just go, like, try it on all these things.
[00:12:02] Andrew Laffoon: Not, not to take away from experimentation. Like, there’s time for R&D projects, right? You wouldn’t have Frontier Labs without that. But I think for us, it’s very much the right tool for the right job, and constant experimentation. ‘Cause some pr- a lot of the problems that we set out to solve 20 years ago, we still haven’t solved. And in fact, it’s only now we’re able to bring AI to bear on your photo albon your camera roll. It’s only now we’re able to bring AI to bear on your photo book and actually make the whole thing, including captions. I actually didn’t expect-
[00:12:32] Andrew Laffoon: … I didn’t realize that we would be able to do that now. It’s super exciting.
[00:12:36] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:37] Andrew Laffoon: And we’re just getting started.
[00:12:38] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, how you, how you measure success as well. And so, on, on the one hand, I mean, any for-profit company, when somebody’s ready to check out, you wanna, you wanna make that process pretty, pretty quick and, and seamless. At the same time, creating a photo book, it’s … You don’t wanna rush it so mu- You want, you want people to create something that is valuable and that stands the test of time and everything like that. What’s the balance that… Like, how are, how are you measuring, like is it just taking a long time because it’s the something with the interface versus people are being thoughtful about the approach? And, how do you, how do you optimize a, a process that isn’t necessarily intended to be speedy?
[00:13:24] Andrew Laffoon: You… Yes, you are hitting so close to the mark of what’s been a struggle for us. Because in fact, it wa- I don’t know, 15 years ago we launched our first mobile product, and it was very much all focused on the time, and the soul of the product actually got a bit lost through it.
[00:13:42] Andrew Laffoon: It was a beautiful product.
[00:13:43] Andrew Laffoon: But the soul of being able to communicate, ultimately Mixbook is a vehicle for communicating love, actually. And, uh-
[00:13:50] Andrew Laffoon: … it- it’s a weird way to talk about it, but it’s what it is, right?
[00:13:54] Greg Kihlström: Right, right. Yeah.
[00:13:55] Andrew Laffoon: And it might be a love for a person, it might be a love for a hobby, but you’re communicating this passion, right? And that the time is actually a function of that, not always.
[00:14:06] Andrew Laffoon: So if you kind of were to break down the process of making a Mixbook the traditional way, way, way, right? Some percentage of the time is actually in the flow state, and it’s purely fun.
[00:14:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:16] Andrew Laffoon: And it’s, and it’s reminiscing and it’s memories, and you’re actually tearing up, and you’re crying, and you’re writing, things that you yourself didn’t realize were in you, right?
[00:14:26] Greg Kihlström: Right. Yeah.
[00:14:26] Andrew Laffoon: In particular, like imagine a use case of a loved one who passed away, right? And as you’re writing up some of these memories, you’re like, you’re realizing things about you- them, and things about you, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m like my dad in that way.” I mean, there’s so much that happens.
[00:14:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:37] Andrew Laffoon: And so if we were to shortcut that, right, that’s, you lose something major.
[00:14:42] Andrew Laffoon: And so I think that’s been our main thing since that mistake we made 15 years ago. We’re like, “Okay, we can never do that again.” And so with story mode, it’s been a really interesting journey to think, “All right. How do I retain that process of,” how do you wanna call it? You’re slowing down effectively, right? You’re slowing down to… It’s something like the process where the brain creates memories when you’re sleeping, right?
[00:15:05] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:05] Andrew Laffoon: Like, memories do not get created if you don’t sleep. I learned this the hard way in college. If you cram for your final and don’t sleep, it would be better to not cram and sleep.
[00:15:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:16] Andrew Laffoon: And so your brain just doesn’t remember. And so I think it’s the same very much with the process of making a photo book, right? We just don’t make the time. And when you actually go and make the book, it causes your memories to get rewired. It causes your perspective to change. And so to your point, I think for us, as far as how do you measure it, we of course do measure time to create timed order.
[00:15:37] Andrew Laffoon: We do measure conversion. but I think a lot more of what we look, look at is some of the, other metrics, in particular NPS, to be honest.
[00:15:46] Andrew Laffoon: Net promoter score-
[00:15:47] Andrew Laffoon: … around are people actually getting the satisfaction from it.
[00:15:52] Greg Kihlström: I would say I don’t have the perfect answer of like, did you, did this result in, like, life transformation on per- of perspective? Like, these things are harder to measure.
[00:16:01] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right.
[00:16:02] Andrew Laffoon: And that’s where you really got to… Again, that’s why the, the permanence ideas of mission and values and craftsmanship and care, those things are really important. And to be totally honest, that’s the reason I call customers every week.
[00:16:15] Andrew Laffoon: ‘Cause if I stop hearing them talk about the big stuff, I’m gonna know we lost something.
[00:16:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, yeah. And, to your point, it’s, beyond the, the interface and that, that initial experience. I mean, there’s a lot. how do you measure if something is on a shelf for 20 years or not? that’s, that’s a difficult measure. But, anything from fulfillment to print quality to all of those things, how do you… and you’re, you’re scaling. There’s, there’s all kinds of business considerations as well. how, how do you take those kinds of considerations into, make, making a product that’s gonna last, but also, making a product that, gets out the door [laughs] to, to the customers?
[00:16:59] Andrew Laffoon: Right. I think part of the answer, which might be a surprising answer, I don’t know why I keep going back to our values, but, is this, one of our values is pioneer spirit.
[00:17:07] Andrew Laffoon: And so one of the things I really believe is that stagnancy is not good. Healthy things grow. Like, if you were ever to, to do gardening, and I’m actually extremely bad at gardening, but-
[00:17:16] Greg Kihlström: [laughs] Same
[00:17:17] Andrew Laffoon: … pretend that I could be good.
[00:17:18] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. [laughs]
[00:17:19] Andrew Laffoon: the answer is, if it’s healthy, it grows. The problem, of course, is keeping it healthy. And so I look at that product as, are we continually reinventing what it can be?
[00:17:29] Andrew Laffoon: Like, it, it has to compete for space on your shelf. It just does.
[00:17:34] Andrew Laffoon: And it has to compete for space in your life. The app has to compete for space on your phone. So if we’re not constantly raising the bar of what it can do, it’s not gonna do that.
[00:17:43] Andrew Laffoon: And so I do think as far as the quality thing goes, I actually came across a really interesting company the other day that looks at brands who are actually silently de- decreasing their quality.
[00:17:54] Andrew Laffoon: I’m forgetting the name right now.
[00:17:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:56] Andrew Laffoon: And the… It’s a really interesting company, and I thought, “Wow, how cool that there’s someone holding us accountable.” ‘Cause I think you’ve probably had the experience, and so have I, of buying a product, and you can tell it was designed for obsolescence.
[00:18:10] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:10] Andrew Laffoon: And I just fundamentally disagree with that. It’s just… But you can see why it happens, because you cannot measure, in the short term, the impact of craftsmanship on the P&L. That’s why it has to be a value that’s truly felt and believed and practiced in the company. And I actually think the answer is, it’s hard to measure, therefore, what you do, you always improve.
[00:18:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it, yeah. Well, and, let- let’s talk a little bit about where this goes next as well. And so, you- you’ve talked about expanding memory preservation into more dynamic digital, a more dynamic digital future. What, what does that look like in practice? And what’s maybe the hard part about, you’ve, you’ve definitely, the, the books are, are the key product here. what does that look like thinking about interactive digital formats plus phy- physical, what d- what does that look like in your mind?
[00:19:08] Andrew Laffoon: So few things. We think about this in terms of problems to solve. And so first things first, my photos are a mess. I don’t know about you, maybe you meticulously organize your photos. We do have those customers, but most people, no, it’s a fricking mess. Like, please help me. What can I do? That’s what we have to solve. That’s what we’re working on solving right now, and by the time you listen to this, we will have launched free on-device memory organization. It finds your best memories, it finds your best stories, and it then enables you to do things with them.
[00:19:38] Andrew Laffoon: Of course, it enables you to make books, amazing books, right? Imagine you open up the app and actually all your trips from the year are there.
[00:19:47] Andrew Laffoon: And last year, and the previous year, and the previous year. Your wedding is in there. Your babies are in there. Like all of it’s there organized for you.
[00:19:57] Andrew Laffoon: And you can quickly turn it into stories that you can then share, and print. Now, in addition to that, not every story is a thing you’re gonna make a book of. The like, “I took my kids to the pool this weekend,” is probably not a book. Could be.
[00:20:11] Andrew Laffoon: Maybe if it was their first time ever swimming or something very dramatic happened, great.
[00:20:15] Andrew Laffoon: Like, make that book.
[00:20:16] Greg Kihlström: Right. [laughs]
[00:20:17] Andrew Laffoon: But for the everyday in between moments and memories, they still need a place to shine.
[00:20:23] Greg Kihlström: And one of the biggest problems we see is that people, we, we don’t live the same lifestyle of togetherness that was lived in the past. We’re far away from people we love oftentimes. Our nuclear family is right there probably, but that’s about it. Wouldn’t it be great if the grandparents and the friends and the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and the siblings had a way of seeing it? And doing that on Facebook, doing it on Instagram, it’s not a thing anymore.
[00:20:46] Greg Kihlström: Right. Yeah.
[00:20:46] Andrew Laffoon: Right? They’ve, they’ve changed into something else. And so we’re launching, and again, by the time you hear this, we will have launched a way of turning those stories into movies, into digital art, into shareable interactive stories that you can then share with family and friends. And that means all of your photos, literally you just download the app, your best stories start coming to life you can almost imagine, like, the commercial writes itself in a sense. Like, their best stories are right there. You pull up your photos app, they’re just hard to find.
[00:21:17] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right. Yeah.
[00:21:18] Andrew Laffoon: And by default, right, we remove all the noise. The noise is not there. And so I think that’s, for us, the key is it’s not just did you make photo books, and that’s great to make photo books. We’re always gonna do that, right? We’re humans, we’re physical, we need these physical things.
[00:21:31] Andrew Laffoon: But there’s another, we, there’s still more signal that we can help to bring to bear.
[00:21:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, yeah, definitely we’ll, we’ll have a link in the show notes here, and can’t wait to check it out. That’s great.
[00:21:44] Andrew Laffoon: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Nice. Well, Andrew, thanks so much for joining today. got a couple last questions for you as we wrap up here. first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:22:00] Andrew Laffoon: I mean, adding the digital side of the business is something I’ve been wanting to do for 20 years.
[00:22:03] Greg Kihlström: [laughs]
[00:22:04] Andrew Laffoon: So we’re definitely gonna be talking about that a year from now.
[00:22:06] Greg Kihlström: Absolutely.
[00:22:07] Andrew Laffoon: And did we actually … I wanna w- wanna hear to what extent it actually helped with your photo mess, [laughs] if you have one.
[00:22:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:15] Andrew Laffoon: And, what stories it, what stories it felt. I think by then we’ll have launched some new things fast following on this. We, we, we have quite a robust roadmap, and if you go back to our mission, the whole central point is actually human connection, stories that bring people together. So I think a year from now we’ll be talking about new ways of seeing how Mixbook is bringing people together through stories, through memories.
[00:22:42] Greg Kihlström: Nice. Love it. Yeah, and I look forward to organizing my mess of photos, ’cause it is definitely, [laughs] I, I definitely have one, so love it. [laughs] And, last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:22:58] Andrew Laffoon: A few things I will say, number one is actually staying healthy. That, that’s, like, the most generic answer ever-
[00:23:04] Andrew Laffoon: … but if you don’t stay healthy, a lot of other things go wrong.
[00:23:07] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:23:08] Andrew Laffoon: number two is staying inspired, and so I would say there’s two sides to that equation. I read a lot. I read a lot of books. I read fiction, I read nonfiction, I read business, I read marketing, I read philosophy, I read religion, all kinds of things.
[00:23:22] Andrew Laffoon: And so I think your brain, you get into it what you, you get out of it what you put in, right? obviously there’s a- some amount of social media which has some amount … I also like reading really old books because they help me kind of expand my mind.
[00:23:36] Andrew Laffoon: but more importantly in terms of the stay, I guess three would be stay connected, and so, and that’s maybe, that’s as important as the other two, which is being around people who inspire me, right?
[00:23:45] Andrew Laffoon: So I am in a number of different groups, CEOs groups, founders groups, a p- a bunch of different things that help me to just constantly be getting ideas. and constantly be wondering about things, and so that to me is, is a recipe. I guess the fourth, which is related to stay healthy, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll particularly call it out, I cannot enough endorse going out in nature. When you observe nature and actually take a moment to slow down, you get weird insights that rewire your brain and you come back s- I come back so much more creative. So I highly endorse that.
