It's about time
Email interview with Saied Ghaffari, software company founder

 

 

Jahanshah Javid
December 27, 2006
iranian.com

-- Why "It's About Time"? What is your intention in creating tutorials for popular software?

It's pretty simple.  My name is Saied. I am 22-years old and am a former Apple employee, most recently with the consumer marketing team at .Mac.  I traveled all over the world, teaching people how to sell .Mac and it worked. We increased .Mac sales exponentially.

Prior to my job on the marketing team, I worked in Apple Stores where I was number one in the company for metric sales of .Mac. The past four years at Apple have been phenomenal but I knew in order to make a bigger impact to consumers, I needed to start a company. That's why "It's About Time" Products was born.

We launched our first application called, "It's About Time" to learn iPhoto - quite possibly the best way for new users to learn the basics of iPhoto interactively. iPhoto is a Macintosh application that allows you to do a lot of great things with your photos. Before our product, you had to buy a 395 page book to learn how to use iPhoto.

Our research shows that most people just want to learn the basics - how to import their photos, organize them, edit using crop, and share via email. We also found that people prefer learning by watching someone and then trying it themselves. So, that's exactly what we created and designed for beginners. Saied - former Apple employee and instructor - will show you how to use the basics of iPhoto through videos and notes and have you will try right after. You can download a demo here:  (Macintosh only)

-- Who are your competitors?

There are online video tutorials and books out there but nothing that is interactive with videos and notes, and designed exclusively for users new to iPhoto.

-- Is the iPhoto tutorial your first? Why did you pick iPhoto? Why not a Photoshop?

All my life I've been the tech support for my family and friends. So I asked myself, why are they coming to me? There were two reasons. 1. People prefer learning by watching someone and then trying it themselves. 2. There was nothing even close to that on the market. So, I decided to build it. When I first thought of the idea, my Aunt who had a new iMac, did not know how to use iPhoto. So, I said, that's what we'll do first.

-- Why should I buy your product?

We believe there are three types of people out there:

1. Clickers - people who will open any application and click around to figure it out (i.e. me).
2. Non-Clickers - people scared out of their minds to click on anything because they think they might break the computer (i.e. my entire family)
3. Middle - people who need someone to show them the basics of the application to get them over 'the hump' and then they'll be fine.

We've designed and created our product for the Middle and Non-Clickers. You'll learn so much faster than you've ever learned before and the best part is, it won't feel like work. It'll be a lot of fun.

-- What's next in this series?

One thing I learned at Apple is to have secrets : ) We like surprising people.

-- Has Apple welcomed "It's About Time"?

With hard work, we're hoping to be in all the Apple Stores in the future. Comment