Laurence Von Thomas has lived in Belgium, the UK, and the US for many years as a serial entrepreneur in film production and photography. In 2019 he moved to Shenzhen. What is he up to?
The traditional 35mm analog camere is very expensive, complex to operate, yet yields accurate and delicate photos. Along with the rapid replacement of the digital camera, more and more people have chosen the cost-effective way of taking pictures, forgetting the beauty and vintage brought by analog cameras.
Reflex was founded in 2017 by Laurence Von Thomas, a serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience in film and photography. He believes that with the convenience and resources provided by modern technology, a new generation of photographic equipment that combines digital and analog cameras will be born and be owned by the general public. But he was beaten down by the traditional camera giants, and no one believed there was room for a camera hardware startup.
At this experience talk, Laurence will share around his "five pillars of progress" as the main theme, to demonstrate how one can through online learning and resource, rapid prototyping, the crowdfunding, digital marketing and community, the global market, as well as open source makers, to disrupt a traditional industry on budget.
Currently, Laurence is in Shenzhen to create the prototype of Reflex, which will be exhibited in a New York photography exhibition in October. And the company is in seed funding.
LinkedIn：https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-von-thomas-b497b233/
Kickstarter：https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bringing-back-the-analogue-slr-camera?ref=video
On Sunday afternoon, October 13, Startup Grind Shenzhen will explore Laurence's multifaceted outlook towards entrepreneurship in different countries, and how he overcomes the challenges setting up a new business in Shenzhen.
Reflex
Founder
Laurence Von Thomas is a serial entrepreneur with a background in film making and photography. In the early naughties, with some college friends, he co-founded a small film production company called Jollywood, it was mainly focussed on short fiction and indie music videos. In 2007 when both YouTube and Vimeo where fresh, he set up the first-ever online music-video platform called Videology, ve…
Laurence Von Thomas is a serial entrepreneur with a background in film making and photography. In the early naughties, with some college friends, he co-founded a small film production company called Jollywood, it was mainly focussed on short fiction and indie music videos. In 2007 when both YouTube and Vimeo where fresh, he set up the first-ever online music-video platform called Videology, very first platform to register and connect login and community through social media accounts. From that he went on to found If You Leave, an online gallery and photography community that quickly grew to become one of the predominant photography platforms with over 750k active followers across three major platforms on IG, Tumblr and FB. The business model created around this critical success came in form of a publishing house called Arthur-Frank. Four books and two magazines followed, quickly becoming best sellers in the independent photography section.
In 2017 he started designing an analog 35mm SLR camera after it had become clear that none of the traditional camera manufacturers would continue production while a noticeable resurgence in analog photography was happening.
This current project is called Reflex:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reflexcamera/reflex-bringing-back-the-analogueslr-camera/description
Laurence has lived, studied and worked in Belgium, UK, USA and most recently has moved to Shenzhen to follow the production of the first Reflex camera.
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