The idea for automotive photography community MadWhips might have started at the University of Guelph where CEO Anthony Carbone went as a twenty-something. “Being the techy geeks that we were, we would take pictures of exotic cars on the street and then we’d exchanged photos and talk about cars over beer and pizza.”
Carbone started what was the beginning of MadWhips in 2005 as a basic WordPress foundation, a site where people could upload their car pictures, whether it was for professional photography or car-spotting purposes. It was a bit ahead of its time, said Carbone, and by 30 he was burned out with full-time work, as well as keeping up with the blog.
But last year the CEO experienced a change of scenery. “I was fired for the first time and I took that as the universe’s sign to look at my life. I took advantage of the fact that I had this hobby website that was a passion, yet still kind of a brewing opportunity to take advantage of.”
Eventually he hooked up with Toronto’s Majestic Media, a company that shared his same vision for a centralized automotive photography-sharing platform. They joined in September and completely revamped the site, making it simpler to share photos. They leveraged both the Pinterest and Instagram models of sharing photos, taking the best of both worlds. “You don’t have a closed system like Instagram, but you also have that component of the web where anything you upload on mobile or web can be searchable and indexible by google,” said Carbone.
This week MadWhips officially re-launched, giving car-lovers everywhere an effective spot to share their best shots.
