EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the applied Garage course of the E&I institute, the aim is to create a startup from scratch. Our final startup is Artheca, an online platform that caters towards B2B customers with customer contact and provides them with a curated gallery of high-quality art from talented emerging and established artists. Additionally we offer a tailored art consulting service, as our customers prefer a full service with selection, delivery and installation of the artworks in their offices or venues. Another main value proposition is our Augmented Reality feature that allows online art acquisition to be made tangible by placing the artwork in a physical space virtually.

Goal

Our goal is to make art acquisition easy and hassle free while still ensuring quality standards. Since we charge lower provision fees than art galleries, our platform can provide value to artists while connecting them to interested clients as well as providing reasonably priced high-quality art to our B2B customers.

Methodology

The main methodology we have used in this course is the Lean Startup Method developed by Eric Ries. At the core of this approach lies the Build-Measure-Learn-Loop, which consists in iteratively testing hypotheses derived from a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas and coming up with an MVP. In our specific case, we have done 5 rounds of hypothesis testing over the course of the semester and we mainly focused on validation through expert interviews, customer surveys and iterating our prototype website and Augmented Reality feature.

Results

The initial idea changed quite drastically through pivoting twice. In the beginning, our platform would provide a rental service, which allowed our customers to take advantage of the sharing economy. We had also focused on emerging artists and have included B2C as a customer segment. Our validation efforts however proved that this would not be profitable and have therefore decided to pivot into a more service based selling platform. We have already launched our website and are in the process of signing up interested artists as well as having 3D and AR models of our paintings on our platform ready to try. This proves that we have found a problem solution fit and can predict through further analyses that our platform will be successful on the market as a digital service that revolutionizes traditional art acquisition.

Cooperation Partner

• Artheca
  artheca.at

Contact Person

• Denise Alessia Steger
  Founder
  h11715890@s.wu.ac.at

Student Team

• Falk Sebastian
  Haustrate Stephanie
  Kamenetska Olena
  Pajak Maciej
  Przeworski Samuel
  Steger Denise Alessia

Project Manager

• Alexander Staub, M.Sc.

• Thomas Pannermayr, MSc (WU)