If The Shoe Fits: Hans Jørgen Wiberg and Be My Eyes
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
I love the story of startup Be My Eyes, because it highlights an entrepreneur who really is changing the world and illustrates the good that comes from a lack of funds.
I read the story in the Lean Startup blog and thought it worth sharing.
“Be My Eyes is just a simple app that basically makes a video call between two persons (…) we have volunteers who sign up and say ‘Yes, I am available to help a blind person see something.’”
The volunteer presence adds an extra layer of independence to the visually impaired person’s life, rather than worrying that they are interrupting or imposing on someone.
All the volunteers do it look at their screen and tell the caller what they see, such as the ingredients in a recipe.
Be My Eyes boasts a global network of volunteers speaking a variety of languages and is always recruiting more.
The great thing is the volunteers can respond from wherever they are and the calls only take a few minutes. If they can’t take the call, no problem, since the system calls multiple people for each request.
Be My Eyes has a number of programs to encourage company involvement, including a way to provide product support to vision impaired/blind customers. This is a great opportunity for startups that want to give back, but have neither time or money to donate.
As to the advantage of minimal funding, it kept them from the typical tech error of over-engineering and forced them to keep the app very simple. Good move.
They had an overly long list of features they wanted to put into the app in the beginning, but which lack of funds prevented. (…) Be My Eyes hasn’t had many requests for all the “brilliant ideas” they had in the beginning. “So maybe it was a really good thing we didn’t overload the app.”
Be it as an individual or involving your family, friends or company be someone’s eyes, you’ll be amazed at the difference doing so will make in your life, as well as theirs.
Image credit: HikingArtist
