Founder Profile: Alpha’a

Alpha’a was created to bring more transparency and information into the arts.  My co-founder Renata and I approached this problem due to different reasons but shared the same belief that the art market could be much bigger and more efficient if we used technology to bring new talent to the public.

At the time I worked in finance and was reading Marc Rich’s book, “King of Oil,” and looking at the oil market in the 60s and comparing it to the way the art market still operates (limited number of players calling shots, lack of price transparency, etc.) there were so many similarities that an opportunity to disrupt it was very clear.

We have worked hard to build a platform capable of handling scale and automated it so that it is self-serving, but we have been approached by several large companies and we’re taking on massive projects which require staffing in operations and sales; proceeds will be used to build this team to further support our growing customer base.

Alpha’a works with clients throughout the whole spectrum of traditional real estate and proptech. From Co-living companies such as Airbnb, Zeus Living, and Envizzo

to traditional hospitality companies such as Hilton, Four Seasons

Commercial, and multi-family real estate companies, such as Related and Beacon,

finally, channel partnerships where we produce white labels for companies such as Gilt, Zola, and Eporta.

Alpha’a offers the quality of a gallery, with the speed of online, high customization and accessible pricing.

This is revolutionary, as the arts traditionally have been a price restrictive market.

But we go a few steps further and a lot of this has to do with our curation.  Our platform is open for any artist to submit works, and we have a voting platform where people can vote for their favorites, a completely democratic process.

We also see the arts as a tool for transformation since it is a truly universal language.  We partner with many NGOs to open calls around social and environmental causes, for example, ocean conservation, female empowerment and have now been approached for a campaign around healthcare.

These campaigns bring to light new artists and represent visually themes that should be discussed.

The art market is still a fairly localized and segmented playing field. There are a few companies that are online but they focus mainly on individuals and sell physical works.

Galleries are expensive and inaccessible, art advisors are a limited source of artwork. 

Companies like Artsy work with the expensive art galleries and art advisors as white pages, they don’t provide customizable solutions that are essential in the design process.

On Alpha’a every artwork can be produced in any size or medium.

Companies like society 6 provide affordable solutions which are completely disposable. On Alpha’a every piece of artwork purchased brings with it the image copyright in perpetuity, enhancing and maintaining the value, and the key is technology.

Execution, in my opinion, is the biggest risk associated with any startup, but looking specifically at our market I’d say even though a slow down in real estate development would affect us, it would also create an opportunity to break away from old business models, which are more expensive for the end client.  It’s also interesting to note that brick and mortar businesses will be forced to change the way they interact with their clientele and we have built features like digital collections that don’t require physical interactions.

Our team has the perfect combination of market savvy know-how and outside critical perspective.  My family has always been in the visual arts, my father’s an art dealer, my uncle a gallery owner and my mother is an artist, even though my background is in finance I grew up with a critical point of view on how the market organizes itself.  My co-founder, Renata, on the other hand, has a master’s from Christie’s ED and has worked in the sector’s most important institutions. Our CTO is experienced in building out products capable of handling scales such as the voice and big brother mobile applications.

Our clients fill out a simple questionnaire, the output is a pre-curated digital collection, they can then select specs (size, finish, etc) and an API will send over high res images to the supplier closest to the client, who will then print, frame and deliver the order.

Our clients also receive a blockchain certificate guaranteeing the provenance and they then own not only the physical piece but the copyright to that image in perpetuity. 

We operate as an inverted marketplace paying the artist a royalty on sales, last year we practiced gross margins of 67%.

This business was built to go public. The arts are such a big part of people’s lives, that increasing the amount of stakeholders through an IPO would be a natural step.  We also see M&A opportunities through giants like Google who have been trying to break into this market for years. Art.com, a poster producer, was recently purchased by Walmart by an amount in the 9 digit realm.