Pixit
We Take Photos Without a Camera
Employee portraits play an important role for companies, both for internal corporate culture and external perception. However, creating employee photos often involves significant effort and costs, as external corporate photographers bring inflexible processes (e.g., scheduling with employees) and charge high hourly rates.
Current solutions are often inefficient, expensive, and unable to scale to the extent that modern companies require.High-quality, realistic images for a consistent corporate identity
High-Quality, Lifelike Images for a Unified Corporate Identity
Pixit provides a simple, fast, and cost-effective solution for creating employee portraits. Our AI platform leverages the latest advancements in generative AI research.
All that’s needed are a few photos, which employees can easily take using their smartphones. In no time, our AI platform generates high-quality, lifelike images that reflect the company’s corporate identity.
How did you get together as a team?
During his PhD at the University of Cologne, Jannik twice missed the opportunity to have professional employee portraits taken: once shortly before starting his position as a research assistant and later, near the end of his PhD, while he was on vacation. Over the course of his four-year PhD, no further photo sessions were organized.
Lacking updated photos, he was forced to rely on outdated black-and-white images for the company website, research proposals, collaboration requests, presentations at international conferences, and internal tools like Slack, Zoom, or Teams.
Nils was also aware of the problem. During his time as a consultant, he noticed that employee photos in client projects were often outdated and unrepresentative. Due to high staff turnover and geographical distances, it was nearly impossible to produce timely, high-quality employee portraits. On top of that, these images were often not aligned with the company’s corporate identity style.
Marco, who already knew Jannik, was immediately enthusiastic about the idea—not least because he had planned and implemented several company-wide photo sessions in his professional career. He knew firsthand the organizational and financial challenges associated with such efforts. When we finally secured the EXIST grant, Marco was all in and decided to join the team as the third co-founder.
Together, we set ourselves the goal of fundamentally modernizing traditional methods of creating employee portraits through innovative, AI-driven techniques.
What are you studying/working or what have you studied?
We all studied at the University of Cologne. Nils and Jannik pursued degrees in Business Information Systems and Information Systems, respectively, while Marco studied Business Administration.
Jannik went on to earn a PhD in Machine Learning at the University of Cologne. During his PhD, he worked as a Machine Learning Scientist at Booking.com in Amsterdam and served as a Machine Learning Consultant in various collaborative projects. He also completed a Research Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
After his Master’s degree, Nils worked as an IT consultant for two and a half years in Switzerland and an additional one and a half years in Germany. He has also been a freelance web developer and consultant for nearly a decade, contributing to several small- and medium-sized web projects. During his studies, he spent time abroad in Russia and South Korea.
During his studies, Marco gained extensive experience in online marketing and customer support while working as a student assistant at Crowdfox GmbH and Validatis GmbH. After graduating, he worked as an Online Marketing Manager at Validatis GmbH before transitioning to QUiFOS GmbH within the DuMont Media Group as a Communication and Brand Manager. In these roles, he specialized in brand development, corporate communications, employer branding, and digital marketing strategies.
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What has Gateway ESC helped you with?
The Gateway has played a crucial role in helping our start-up further develop and strategically align our business idea. In addition to providing a professional workspace at the InnoDom, we received targeted consultations that offered practical solutions to our challenges.
A particular highlight is the Gateway’s network: connections to industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, and other start-ups have opened up new perspectives for us.
Moreover, the Gateway supported us in applying for the EXIST start-up grant and continues to guide us as participants in the Gateway ESC Accelerator Batch #4. The high-quality workshops and intensive mentoring offered there help us drive our idea forward and bring it to a professional level.
The regularly organized workshops and networking events were also of great value to us. They not only provided a platform to build new connections but also offered numerous insights to enhance our skills and elevate our idea to the next level. The Gateway is an indispensable partner on our journey.