Locationscout - From idea to 140,000 users.

An interview with Manuel Becker, founder of Locationscout

👋 Hey, it’s Orel here! Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share my journey and lessons as a solopreneur who quit his job to chase his dreams.

I am a software developer, and so far I have x3 failed projects, and x2 ongoing.

I also publish Tech Books summaries along with Anton Zaides.

Today’s article is going to be different than usual.

I have recently connected with Manuel Becker, the founder of Locationscout, and decided to take a leap and ask him for an interview, to which he agreed.

I sent him a bunch of questions and summarized the answers into an article.

I’ll start with a quick introduction to Locationscout and Manuel and then dive deeper into the interview.

Introduction

Locationscout

Locationscout is a platform where you can find the best places for photography and travel. Get exact geo-positions for the world's most beautiful photo spots to create memories you will remember for a lifetime.

But that’s not all. As a traveler, you can use Locationscout to find beautiful areas near you to go and see, get live directions and weather, so you can find the best place for you. The platform has both an iOS and an Android app.

And if you’re into photography and you want to get tips and learn how to improve, Locationscout has over 11 hours of video courses.

Locationscout started with Manuel’s personal need to find beautiful places and a serendipitous encounter in San Francisco and grew into the world’s largest platform of its kind, with over 140,000 users and 220,000 entries.

Who is Manuel Becker

Manuel Becker is a dedicated entrepreneur from the Rhineland in Germany.

His passion for design and coding led him to create Germany’s largest forum for web and graphic design, with nearly one million users per month.

Due to no sustainable business model and insufficient revenue from ads., he shut down the forum in 2014 despite its popularity and started to work on Locationscout, the idea he had for 3 years already in his mind.

Fast forward to 2011, the idea for Locationscout was planted and 3 years later the first version was launched.

As a solo developer who studied Computer Visualistics (Which leans heavily towards math and C++), Manuel had to learn web and app development all by himself.

As a father of two young children with 2 full-time jobs (His freelance work and Locationscout), Manuel realized he couldn’t pull this off for a long time, so he took the brave step and dropped his freelance work to focus solely on Locationscout.

Locationscout early days

Getting the idea

During a vacation with his girlfriend in San Francisco in 2011 Manuel met a jogger at the Golden Gate Bridge, who turned out to be a fellow German. As she knew the area very well, she recommended they go see the sunrise in Kirby Cove, which turned out to be an unforgettable experience.

That was the moment the seed for Locationscout was planted in Manuel’s brain. A simple question led him to build a huge platform to answer it.

“How could I ever find this place without this random encounter?”

Idea to action

For several years the question was stuck in his head until he decided to do something about it.

Since he had experience with building websites and SEO, it was the natural thing for him to start his online platform. In 2014 he decided to take the step and after only 3 weeks of development, Locationscout went live.

---

Funny story:

Manuel wanted to verify and test his platform. During a trip to Chicago, he handed out printed cards to photographers who told him that his idea was amazing and that it was going to be a banger.

But guess what? Locationscout had 0 traffic from the USA during his trip and thereafter.

---

As a self-employed web designer, Manuel slowly shifted most of his freelance work hours to developing and improving the platform while reducing his costs to an absolute minimum. Eventually, he stopped doing freelance work and put 100% into Locationscout.

Building the business

Growth and development

After launching Locationscout, Manuel put everything he had to nurture and expand the platform.

First by using his design and SEO skills to improve his organic growth and make people stick around. In addition, Manuel wrote guest posts on big photo platforms, which provided him with great insights and directed traffic to Locationscout.

Almost a decade of work led Locationscout to be the biggest photo spots platform with over 140,000 users.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, you know that getting to 140,000 users is an incredible achievement.
And believe it or not, Locationscout is still a one-man operation.

Overcoming setbacks

As for every great product, it didn’t go smoothly. COVID-19 posed significant challenges for Locationscout, as travel restrictions greatly reduced the demand for lots of businesses.

Instead of seeing it as a setback that might make Manuel shut down the platform, he decided to use this opportunity to innovate and introduce a new feature. A learning section, in which users could explore tips on capturing the perfect photo, thus maintaining engagement even when they couldn't travel.

In addition to that, Manuel added a new feature, Around Me, which enabled users to discover beautiful places based on their current location. This turned out to be Locationscout’s most valuable feature.

These responses not only helped Locationscout be relevant even during the pandemic, it also strengthened its value proposition and increased the target audience.

Achieving sustainability

While most founders focus on growing as fast as possible, Manuel put all his effort into improving the platform step by step and making decisions for long and sustainable growth until it turned into a potentially viable business.

At first, he tried ads again, and similar to the web design forum they didn’t even cover the costs for the monthly server infrastructure. He had lots of meetings with all kinds of companies related to photography and travel but in the end, the best deal was often a display ad which was worth less than the time and travel expenses invested.

That’s when Manuel started investing heavily in learning about subscription models and implementing them in Locationscout, to a point in which Locationscout is providing enough for him to keep working on it full-time while financing the growing maintenance cost.

Remember: it didn’t just happen.

A very important thing to keep in mind is that these things don’t just happen. Manuel invested many years into building, designing and marketing Locationscout to get to a point where it’s a sustainable business. He spent days, weekends and holidays learning how to develop apps and improve the platform.

Manuel placed immense value on personal connections with his users. Instead of acting like a big company, he personalized Locationscout by taking feedback and improving accordingly.

The fact that he was willing to take that interview with me, having less than 300 subscribers, shows you how much he values personal connections.

Personal insights from Manuel

Suggestions for young entrepreneurs at the beginning of the road?

Prepare for the long run and initially invest all your efforts into creating value for potential users or customers. There is no shortcut and this focus will make sure you will talk to as many people as possible while trying to improve their life. What also helped me a lot is shifting away from trying to act as a large company and personalize the experience. Stay available as much as possible to your users, connect with them, and make sure they understand that you will do everything you can to make your product or service worth their attention.

Advice you would give your 10 years ago self?

Start investing in stocks as early as possible to reduce financial pressure and invest in your health. Working hard is all about finding a balance and while it’s easy in the twenties to do one-night session after another, the older you get the more you will realize that you might not have this option anymore. Also, make sure to work on monetization as early as possible even if it’s a topic you might not like. It’s essential to every business and the more you learn about it, the more fun it actually is as you will learn a lot more than you might think.

Favorite book and why?

Probably “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries because it gave me an entirely new perspective on how to actually build something in a smart way and care less about perfection initially. After reading “The Ride of a Lifetime” by Robert Iger I quickly recognized that my company isn’t a lean startup anymore and whenever he wrote about the perfect experience for the customer I recognized how obsessed I was with this thought. That’s when I started to focus more on the entire visual experience again which is something I love anyway and I hope my users appreciate it as much as I do.

If you had to, would you start all over again?

Always. There is nothing where you will learn and grow as much as you do as a founder and where you can have such a big positive impact on the lives of other people.

If you had to write a sentence on a billboard, what would it be?

“Be so good that they can’t ignore you!”

Conclusion

Manuel Becker’s journey with Locationscout has been a mix of personal passion and perseverance. From a random meeting in San Francisco to overcoming challenges posed by a global pandemic, Manuel has created the largest platform for photography enthusiasts in the world.

His story is a testament to what can be achieved when you combine innovative thinking with a user-centered mindset and relentless commitment.

Now, if you are into photography, considering taking a vacation or planning a trip, make sure to check out Locationscout to find the best and most beautiful locations out there to make your vacation unforgettable.

“Don’t be a tourist. Be a traveler”