The tech-transformation of a traditional hardware company
It’s 2015. CEO Anders Hedebark is concerned about the future. His company, Profoto, a company making flashes for pro-photographers, is very profitable and growing at a pace of 50% per year. But still, he is concerned.
Anders was working at Hasselblad when it failed during the digital transition of the early 00s. His VP Sales, Patrik Bluhme, worked for Kodak at the same time, then later at SONY when the TV industry was facing the analogue-to-digital transition with flat screen TVs. They both knew a technology shift could happen fast and be really brutal. But what shift should Profoto prepare for?
Over lunch, Anders was chatting to one of the firmware developers: “smartphone cameras are getting better. Why not connect Profoto flashes to them?” It couldn’t be that hard…or could it?
At the time I, Tobias Lindbäck, had joined Profoto to head up R&D as VP Technology and this task landed in my lap. The first step was to recruit someone capable of figuring out a way to precisely sync a flash with a smartphone. I basically needed a rocket scientist.
So I recruited Christian Ridderström — a PhD in Physics — from the space industry.
Back then Profoto were experts in power electronics for large flashes. The general software know-how in the organization was low, and knowledge of smartphones and Bluetooth connectivity close to zero. But we learned, step by step.
A small team was formed and we gradually gained insight into how the iPhone camera worked, as well as what Bluetooth had to offer. We soon realized that pure synchronization was out of the question. We had no control over the exact time of capture, while Bluetooth communication isn’t exactly a real-time system. So, what to do?
The idea we came up with was to schedule the capture event instead of having immediate synchronization like a traditional DSLR-camera. It sounded great on paper, but we would have to solve three major issues:
1. Predicting the exact time for future capturing events in iOS
2. Predicting exactly when a Bluetooth message would arrive to the external flash
3. Keeping two separate devices in perfect time sync
All three were eventually resolved, resulting in a strong patent application. However, some parts were still of a “secret sauce” type, existing only in Christian’s brain. The next challenge was to get someone else in the company to really understand what he had done. To further develop his ideas and bring in more innovation, we realized it was crucial to spread this knowledge to more people — a task that shouldn’t be underestimated.
By early 2018 we had dealt with our two big hurdles: we had sync over Bluetooth, using a standard BLE-protocol, and we had a prototype iOS camera app. Launch time! Or…?
Maybe not. The images looked really weird in many cases. We were so focused on what we thought were the difficult parts that we missed the obvious: the images have to look good! Especially to a new user trying the app for the first time. We faced a common dilemma on entering into a new technology field: we simply didn’t know what we didn’t know. It’s hard to plan for unknown unknowns.
Despite being in the photography business for 50 years, Profoto had never needed to bother with image technology. Not many developers understand image tech, so even if the problem were to be identified, it wouldn’t be easy to solve. But luckily we did discover enough hidden talent in our R&D department to at least get started.
Our first public iOS app was launched in September 2018. We kept things super simple, making everything manual and with a “flash” which was basically an LED square pulse. At the time it was more of a toy than anything useful, but still, it felt very powerful firing the B10 — a pretty large light — from an iPhone.
We really didn’t understand back then just how hard it would be to make a smartphone flash solution for “everyone”. The problem is that much of the smartness in the smartphone camera is lost when you suddenly fire a flash. A lot of the features that smartphone users take for granted, we needed to re-build from scratch.
In 2019, we finally had a breakthrough in our way of working. I recruited Vladimir Hudnitsky as manager of the app development — a young guy from Belarus with in-depth knowledge of development processes as well as image tech. He understood the customer values we wanted to achieve, enabling him to build and lead the team in the right direction. Finally, we also established a good collaboration between image tech and app development.
In parallel to this development, me and the multi-talented Profoto engineer Anton Falk headed to CES in Las Vegas to showcase our app and the B10 for Huawei, who at the time were seeking out partners on the camera side. After a few more meetings we got the thumbs up and Huawei acquired a license to use the Profoto BLE Sync in their native camera.
The Huawei collaboration was a huge milestone. Now we were suddenly delivering code to one of the largest tech companies in the world. A new experience for an old hardware company.
On September 18, 2019 our improved iOS app was launched alongside the C1 series of LED smartphone lights. The following day, September 19, Huawei launched their Mate 30 with Profoto support from the native camera app.
At the time of writing (May 2020) we are preparing a launch to support large Xenon studio flashes. This, of course, means we’re stumbling into new technical challenges. But it’s much easier to handle such issues now that the know-how is spread throughout the organization and we have a better organizational set-up. I would say we now have world-leading knowledge within the very narrow field of image technology for flash photography. We’ve certainly come a long way since 2015!
There is much to be learned from this journey. If I were to pick two things that I believe might also be helpful to others, it would be the following:
1. Focus on broad knowledge build-up
Ensure that the knowledge is constantly being taken care of and that you have a culture of knowledge sharing. For each expert in a given subject, you need another couple of people in the team on a semi-expert level. The more you spread the core knowledge, the more you increase the likelihood of new innovations.
2. As a leader you need to be able to handle the “unknown unknowns”
Starting out in a new area where “you don’t know what you don’t know” can be dangerous. It’s easy to miss the big picture and let consultants — or employees for that matter — drag you in the wrong direction. As a leader, you need to enhance your own knowledge to a level where you can recruit the right people and make the right strategic decisions. You can’t trust externals to make those choices. As a leader you need to take the responsibility yourself.
/Tobias Lindbäck
Header image by Lars Bredenberg
