Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Jason Compton, CEO and Founder of SnakeSnap:
Q: Could you tell us something more about the company and what you do?
A: SnakeSnap is a mobile identification software of all snakes. We are currently manually ID’ing snakes with a team of experts behind the scenes while we build an Artificial Intelligence system for automated recognition. We will have games, removal services and unique ways of educating.
Q: Jason, how did you come up with the idea of Snake Snap?
A: Actually a year and a half ago snakes were my biggest fear. I am 40 years old and was raised in Florida and last year my family and some friends were in my swimming pool and my son (who was 8 at the time and now 9) screams snake!! We all thought he was joking but he wasn’t and everyone walked on water to get out and away. I went to see what it was as it was very tiny. When I scooped it up with the pool net I immediately thought what if we could take a picture of this snake and know what it is right away. I got on the University of Florida’s website (which is where I was born and graduated with my bachelors and international finance degree) and ended up finding the snake which was a Ringneck snake I read that it’s most commonly found in Florida swimming pools because they get in to have a drink of water but they are too small to get out. I thought how harmless and actually felt bad for them. At that moment SnakeSnap was born.
Q: What kinds of snakes can be recognized with your mobile app?
A: Right now it’s manual identification of all snakes and ultimately it will be machine learned for all snakes. We will start automated function in just the United States while we continue to manually ID in other countries. It takes a lot of photos for that but we are adding them fast. in 6 months since we launched June 12th of this year we have over 12,000 downloads and over 10,000 photo submissions from all US states and over 65 countries!
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Q: How would you convince the reader to start using your app?
A: The way I learned was not traditional. I call it a fear wall that most people on the planet have towards snakes. I could not even look at a snake on tv and did not personally know what any snake was other than a black racer a year and half ago. Today I can almost detect all the snakes in the US. Whether you are an avid snake lover, terrified of them, have kids, have animals or pets this app is there to protect you, your family and the snake. Snakes also have many benefits that most people are not aware of so we will educate in a fun and interactive way for all walks of life.
Q: What can we expect from Snake Snap in the future?
A: We are building the automated function as well as working to build a snake removal service inside of the app. Since we will know your location we can then have someone recommended in your area. Kind of like a Snake Google. we are starting a weekly blog to increase our engagement on social media while educating differently. We currently have 13-14k followers between FB, and Instagram. Also we will be partnering with fire departments all over the nation since they are first response for a snake or venom call. if we can help them IDENTIFY the snake and it is a bite from a Venomous snake we can save them time to a call. If we can help determine it is not a Venomous snake then it saves them from having to go and we can just send them contact info for a removal service. Also Boy Scouts, constructions workers etc. ultimately would love to get connected thru the military and provide our service to them.
We will have analytics of snake sightings also that we believe will be valuable to top universities and conservation efforts.
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