Interview with Sean Seah, Co-founder of Phokki

Will the 3rd time be the charm for Seah Seah, co-founder of Phokki? Back when Sean first graduated, he joined the Defense Science Organisation but quickly got bored. So, he decided to leave and start his own startup. When that did not work, he joined yet another startup but left when disagreements on the direction of the company surfaced. Next was Phokki, which is something that is still alive and kicking today and which Sean still continues to run today. We speak to Sean about his entrepreneurship journey and the story behind Phokki – the site that connects buyers directly to digital artists.

Hi Sean, tell us in three words what Phokki is.

Arts for everyone.

What’s your background and what were you doing before starting Phokki?

I graduated from Nanyang Technological University with a Degree in Computer Engineering but spent most of my time playing Inline Hockey. My first job is in Defense Science Organization aka DSO as a Software Engineer, but got sick of it because none of the things I am doing is of practical use. So with a few friends from JC, we decided to do some business and landed myself in Bytesquare as their CTO.

After which, I got involved in a Singapore-based mobile VoIP startup for about 2 years, from doing project manager to Business Development. I left the company when my partner and I have different views on running the business. I wanted a Asia version of Ribbit.com back then, but they have more practical views.

Kris and I started Phokki after winning Start-Up@Singapore 2008. During then, we named our team as pic2pic.

Why Phokki?

To change the world of course.

If you look on the Internet, you see that there are so many photo editing tools. From Adobe PS to online tools such as FotoFlexer.com (endorsed by Facebook) and picnik.com.

They have done a fantastic jobs in helping artist wannabe to do photo enhancement. But we felt that there is still a missing gap. There are so many people like me, who simply wish to have a stunning artworks done with my friends/family photo and give it as a surprise to them. So Kris and I came up with Phokki, a concept to harness the true power on Internet (the power of decentralization) which bring digital artists and buyers together.

We help the 99% of the world people who knows nuts about photoshop (and really do not want to know) to find the 1% of the passionate digital artists, and get them to produce stunning artworks with their photos.

Was there any particularly difficult time when you were trying to start up?