Samira Sabulis' history as a dancer, a model, a Bulgarian talk show host and a professional photographer don't seem like the obvious ingredients for becoming a startup entrepreneur, but they've all played a vital role in training this University of Maryland alumna for her work as founder of video-tagging software startup Tagazu.
Tagazu, based out of tech startup incubator 1776, offers e-commerce platforms a way to tag items in videos with links to where people can actually purchase them. The tags even follow the object around as it moves around the screen. It's a way for companies to leverage the growing amount of time they spend watching videos while ideally not annoying people watching the videos the way that pop-up ads or commercials before and after a video might. The edited videos can then be shared via social media or embedded directly into websites.
"They're clickable hotspots, but they don't make the video hard to watch," Sabulis said. "I've been a video editor and I know how important that is. How we watch videos hasn't changed for decades but this adds more interactivity."
Sabulis' work as video creative director for the group Intellectuals DC helped spark the idea of Tagazu, but Sabulis has been an enterprising businesswoman since long before she and her husband Aurimas, himself a Georgetown MBA, started working on the startup in 2013.
"I was always an entrepreneur when I think about it," Sabulis said.
Sabulis told the story of how, as a kid in Bulgaria, she took advantage of a craze for aroma-infused books at her school. She would sell her classmates the books a page at a time at quadruple the cost.
"I would create a demand for the most popular ones by buying them out from every store until they were very rare," Sabulis said. "I had to stop because I got in trouble. Apparently kids were not eating at school because they were giving me all their money."
"I was always an entrepreneur when I think about it."
Outside of creating a commercial empire at school, Sabulis was a model and dancer. She was even given her own, Polish-language talk show called Cherno Kadife (Black Velvet) when she was 14. When she was 17, her family moved to the DC area and she finished high school locally. An injury ended her dancing career though, leading Sabulis to look for new ideas. She decided to study business at UMd.
"Up until then all I knew was art so I decided to study something different," Sabulis said. "Unfortunately for me and everyone who graduated with me it was 2008 and the market collapsed. It was very hard to find something decent even if you had great schooling and experience."
Sabulis used her language skills to get a job at a law firm but quickly grew bored. She decided to try being a professional photographer, taking pictures of her friends, many of whom were already professional models. Her talent earned her photographs places in galleries and the beginning of her work in videography as well.
"I had three exhibits, including one that sold out, but I donated the money to charity," Sabulis said. "I decided it was a sign that the universe was showing me that I need to continue just trying things out."
Tagazu, with all of the work that growing it entails, will be plenty to keep Sabulis busy she said. The platform already has some clients who tested out the beta, with plans to add more now that the official first version is online. Sabulis said she sees Tagazu as a tool useful not only for e-commerce companies, but for educational and research purposes too and has started to reach out to her community at UMd to talk about the possibilities with them. Her wildly varied career couldn't have ended up where it has without what she learned there, Sabulis said.
"My education was an investment that is paying off as an entrpreneur," Sabulis said. "I love creating something for myself and am grateful for everything I've learned."
