Kruu founders make millions with photo booths – these are their 4 best tips for entrepreneurs

It all started with a product and an attentive founder: Jochen Dolderer, one of the three later founders of Kruu, was working part-time as a wedding DJ in 2015 and pricked up his ears when he learned that there were photo booths that could be sent by mail.

Photo booths are a popular gadget at weddings : They come in different designs, but always include a camera and offer the bride and groom and wedding guests the opportunity to take group photos using the self-timer and in virtually unlimited numbers.

They're often brought and set up by DJs or photographers. But Dolderer saw an opportunity to simplify this process—and thus the potential to scale such an offering.

In 2015, Dolderer quickly convinced his business partners Philipp Schreiber and Oliver Grünberg, with whom he already ran an advertising agency at the time, to join the company. "Even though we had no connection to the wedding business up to that point," says Philipp Schreiber, who leads Kruu as CEO.

Dolderer's keen instinct and a smart scaling strategy helped the founding trio generate millions in revenue. Kruu has since become the global market leader in photo booths . The company generated approximately €20 million in revenue last year in Europe and the US. Here's how they did it:

The Kruu founding trio actually had no idea about photo booths, says Schreiber. What they did know, however, was that they could probably build something like that. Because that would have involved both capital and time expenditure, they decided to "validate their idea first," as Schreiber puts it.