On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I sat down to draw a woman. Nothing too complicated, in theory—a sweeping hairline here, a Disney princess-like nose there. Aiding me was an app that projected the image I was tracing onto a tiny, square canvas. I watched the screen as I drew. The canvas changed underneath my pencil, but my eyes were trained on the iPad.
About 90 seconds later, I had created my masterpiece in miniature. I turned the iPad off and held up the canvas. There she was: the tiny woman.
"We want to enable anyone to create real art," Elad Katav told me. Katav is the CEO and founder of Cupixel, the Boston-based startup behind all this.
Beginning Monday, when commercial sales begin through the Home Shopping Network, $69.99 will get you a full Cupixel kit with acrylic paints, brushes, graphite pencils, a stand for your phone or tablet, a pad, and nine mini canvases that clip together in a 7-by-7-in. frame. The app (the kit also includes a code to access the app's full features) guides you through all the steps needed to create a piece of art based on works licensed by professional artists, other prints, or photos you can upload. No artistic experience required.
"Art, for some reason, belongs to those who can," Katav said. "We are on a mission to change that and actually enable anyone, no matter what age, no matter what background, to create something astonishing that he chose, any type of art in any size, and hang it on the wall with pride."
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Katav is not an artist by training. Before Cupixel, he spent 20 years in B2B software; before that, he was a major in the Israeli military. Several years ago, he was working at a small company when it suddenly went under.
"I was devastated," Katav said. Although the company would ultimately remain dead, he was not without hope. There were several former clients in London. Katav flew back and forth between the U.K. and the States, attempting to revive his business.
On one of those trips, he wandered into a gallery by mistake. Moved by a piece of artwork, he asked the gallery manager the price. It was, of course, wildly out of Katav's budget—but he was inspired to try to replicate it.
"I went back home. I told my wife, 'I'm going to create astonishing artwork,'" Katav said. "And it was horrible. It was the worst ever. I couldn't stand the process. It was really messy."
Katav may not have been an artist, but his software background got him thinking about ways he could leverage technology to make respectable creations. He assembled a team of now 10 people, split between Boston and Tel Aviv, Israel, to create the augmented reality software that powers the Cupixel app. He sought feedback from artists around the world, as well as from everyday users who found some kind of solace in art.
Cupixel has raised about $2 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors all over the world—some in Boston and other American cities, others in Israel, Italy, and the U.K. But it's almost by luck that Katav and his team are still in Boston.
"Boston is not a welcoming place for consumer startups," he said. "It was really hard to find money around here and to establish a company here. Many of my advisors, right away, told me, 'Go to San Francisco. It's going to be easier there.'"
The Bay Area, of course, is where much of America's tech capital is cloistered. After a year of fruitless fundraising attempts, Katav, at his wit's end, was ready to move across the country. But just before he packed his bags, he called up a friend of his: Dan Adika, CEO and co-founder of WalkMe and a former programmer with the Israeli Defense Forces, where Katav had served.
As Katav tells it, Adika said, "Stay where you are. I'm going to send you a check."
And Katav did.
"I decided to stay," Katav said. "I think it's a great city. I love the city. Great education. It's very close to Israel, so to speak—only seven hours' difference. I insisted on building a site and opening a branch in Israel to bring innovation and talent there. The mix of selling and operating here [in Boston] and having the R&D there, it really helped me out. The vision is to keep the company here, Boston-based, and see how we grow."
Long-term? The dream is to disrupt the world of arts and crafts. Katav wants to provide high-quality artistic tools and basic art education to people all around the world, as quickly as possible. The Home Shopping Network has bought all of Cupixel's inventory to sell through its site. Offline, Cupixel hosts corporate events like the popular "paint nights," where employees can eat, drink and paint with Cupixel.
Cupixel will be available for purchase on the Home Shopping Network on Monday with an initial batch of 4,000 kits. A second batch will become available in late August.
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