Turning users into influencers. How to run a community-based SaaS | Nicky Szmala @picdrop

In this episode of SaaS Unbound, Anna Nadeina talks with Nicky Szmala, CEO of PicDrop, about community-led growth, influencer relationships, international expansion, and leading a company after an acquisition.

PicDrop was built by photographers for photographers. Its growth story is a useful reminder for SaaS leaders: when distribution feels broken, the answer is rarely another shortcut. It is often a matter of getting closer to the people a product is made for, earning their trust, and becoming a meaningful part of their community.

What is PicDrop?

PicDrop is a platform that helps professional photographers share work with clients, manage proofing, and collaborate around visual assets. While its core audience is professional photographers—many of whom operate as small businesses—the platform also serves studios, companies, sports clubs, and other organizations.

That distinction matters. A photographer may begin by using PicDrop to deliver imagery to a client, but the organization receiving the work can quickly see value in using the platform more broadly. What starts as a photographer’s delivery workflow can become a tool for teams that need to organize, review, and work with visual assets.

This is where a vertical product can outperform a general-purpose file-sharing tool. Platforms such as Dropbox can serve many use cases, but they are not designed around the workflow, visual standards, and practical needs of professional photography. PicDrop’s advantage comes from being opinionated about the people it serves.

From marketing in Berlin to 16 years in Asia

Nicky’s path to PicDrop was not a linear one. His career began in marketing in Berlin, working for a company within the WPP network. An opportunity to join a new joint venture with Ogilvy took him to Beijing, initially for what was meant to be a three-month project.

He stayed in Asia for 16 years.

Over that period, he worked with technology and software clients, spent time at Lenovo organizing global product launches, and later joined a fast-growing SaaS company in Taiwan that competed in the e-signature space. The company ultimately went public.

After years in Asia, Nicky decided to return to Germany with his family. A connection to the SaaS Group team led to the opportunity to become PicDrop’s CEO after its acquisition.

Leading a company after acquisition starts with observation

Joining a business after an acquisition can look daunting from the outside. A new CEO has to learn the product, team, customers, and culture while entering a company that has already been shaped by its founders.

Nicky’s approach is straightforward: begin in the observer seat.

Numbers and briefings are important, but they only provide part of the picture. The first priority is understanding the people: their ambitions, strengths, concerns, working relationships, and the dynamics behind the organization’s existing decisions.

That also means recognizing what has already worked. A new leader does not need to reinvent every process or turn the company upside down simply to demonstrate change. The goal is to identify where experience, observation, and new resources can create genuine value.

This mindset is especially important when founders remain involved. Building a company from scratch, managing payroll, finding product-market fit, and carrying the risk of entrepreneurship are difficult jobs. A leader joining later should respect the foundation that already exists.

Independence with access to a stronger operating system

For a smaller SaaS company, becoming part of a larger group can unlock capabilities that would otherwise be difficult to build internally. PicDrop retains independence in defining its strategy and choosing how to use available support, while gaining access to specialist teams across the SaaS Group organization.

Nicky describes this as two levels of turbo.

• Always-on support: Embedded finance and HR expertise gives a smaller brand access to specialist knowledge that would be difficult to hire for internally.
• On-demand acceleration: Teams can bring in support for marketing, product, AI, data, and DevSecOps when a particular initiative needs more capacity or expertise.

The value is not only in receiving advice. It is in being able to execute. Founders can often find excellent ideas at conferences, in peer communities, or from advisors. The hard part is having the people and capacity to put those ideas into practice quickly.

At the same time, central support does not mean a top-down operating model. Brands can choose which resources to use and which partners or tools make sense for their own business. The central teams act as a sounding board and an execution layer, not a replacement for a brand’s strategy.

The two growth engines behind PicDrop’s expansion

PicDrop’s growth is driven by two complementary engines: community-based partnerships and paid growth.

The first engine is built around high-caliber photographers, creators, and people with credibility in the photography space. Rather than treating influencer marketing as a purely transactional channel, PicDrop looks for people who genuinely use and value the product.

That creates a more natural relationship. In some cases, photographers already mention PicDrop organically before a formal partnership begins. In others, a collaboration develops over time through conversations and mutual respect for the creator’s work.

There is no one-size-fits-all influencer model. Some creators work through agencies. Some are exceptionally busy. Some require time to build trust before a partnership makes sense. The most effective approach is to adapt to the individual rather than force every relationship into a standardized commercial package.

Long-term partnerships matter more than one-off campaigns. PicDrop also works with photography-focused podcasts and industry voices because the company sees itself as part of the wider creative community—not simply as a brand trying to borrow someone else’s audience.

The second growth engine is paid acquisition, which supports expansion in English-speaking markets and localized regions. Localization is being tested carefully, with product experiences, landing pages, paid campaigns, and creator partnerships adapted for local audiences.

The early results demonstrate an important principle: language and local relevance can have a direct impact on adoption. But localization is not just translation. It requires a real understanding of customer expectations, support needs, payment preferences, and cultural context.

Why expansion into Asia requires focus

Asia is a substantial opportunity for photography products, but it cannot be treated as one uniform market. Different countries have different payment systems, levels of willingness to pay, business practices, and expectations around localization.

For a company entering from Europe, expansion works best when it begins with focus. Instead of trying to enter an entire region at once, choose one market, understand what makes it distinct, and build the operational capability to serve it well.

International growth is not only about demand signals. It also depends on whether product, support, and operations can work together at the required level. Markets that are geographically and culturally closer can offer a more manageable starting point before moving into regions that require deeper adaptation.

AI, authentic imagery, and photographers’ rights

AI has created understandable tension across creative industries, including photography. But its impact depends heavily on the type of work involved.

For people-focused photography, corporate imagery, and event photography, authenticity remains central. The image is not only a visual output. It is connected to a real person, a real moment, and the story behind it. AI may play a role in some commercial productions, but it does not remove the need for authentic photography.

PicDrop’s position is photographer-first. AI can become an enabler that makes parts of a workflow more efficient and gives creators more time to focus on their craft. It should not be viewed primarily as a replacement for the act of creation.

The company also supports the principle that photographers should retain rights to their work and that AI-generated or modified imagery should be clearly identified. Transparency is becoming more important as synthetic and altered media becomes more widespread.

One relevant development is C2PA, a technical standard designed to help establish the origin and modification history of digital content. Provenance information can provide more context about how an image was created or edited, helping audiences distinguish between original, altered, and AI-generated work.

Distribution is not broken—shortcuts are

Many founders feel that distribution has become harder. Search behavior is changing, AI tools are shaping how people discover products, and generic content strategies are becoming less reliable.

But there is an important distinction between distribution being broken and shortcuts to distribution being broken.

If a company is clear about the audience it serves, it can go where those people already are. That may mean becoming part of industry conversations, supporting useful content, attending niche events, working with respected practitioners, or creating tools and resources that solve adjacent problems.

Generic “top 10” content and formulaic SEO pages may still have a place, but they do not create a real relationship. Community-led growth asks a deeper question: what are customers struggling with beyond the narrow boundaries of the product?

Some answers may become paid features. Others may become free resources, conversations, partnerships, or education. The common thread is a commitment to be genuinely useful.

Why “unscalable” events can create scalable learning

Taking several team members to an event, traveling internationally, and spending a week away from day-to-day work can sound inefficient. It is difficult to place that kind of activity into a neat acquisition spreadsheet.

Yet direct contact with customers can produce learning that is hard to get anywhere else.

Events create a reality check. They reveal whether internal assumptions are correct, what customers truly care about, how they describe their challenges, and where a product fits into their real workflow. A single week spent in the field can generate insights that improve positioning, partnerships, product priorities, and messaging for months afterward.

This is one reason founder-led growth is so powerful in early-stage SaaS. Founders are often close to the original pain point because they experienced it themselves. PicDrop began with a photographer who needed a better way to deliver work to clients. Maintaining that closeness to the problem remains a competitive advantage as the business grows.

Use AI for the first layer, then validate through people

AI can help leaders become informed faster. It can assist with market analysis, research, drafts, and preparation. But it should be treated as a first layer—not the final answer.

Important decisions still require validation through real interaction. If a company wants to build a partnership, understand a market, or uncover a customer’s actual needs, it has to communicate directly with people and test its assumptions.

AI can support the process, but trust, context, and collaboration are built through human relationships.

Advice for acquired teams: openness creates momentum

Acquisition is a change, even when it is handled thoughtfully. Teams can feel uncertainty as they become part of a larger organization, and new leaders must earn trust rather than assume it.

Nicky’s advice for founders, CEOs, and teams navigating this transition is openness.

Be honest about what worked, what did not work, where the gaps are, and what the business needs next. Trying to protect every shortcoming limits the ability of new partners and colleagues to help.

Openness must work both ways. New leaders need to recognize their own biases, test their narratives through observation, and remain willing to change their minds. Teams grow faster when people can admit that an earlier assumption was wrong or that someone else has a better idea.

Accountability matters too. A CEO is not there to be served by the team. The CEO’s job is to serve the team, remove obstacles, create clarity, and walk the extra mile when needed.

A practical leadership hack: calm the nervous system

In a world full of productivity hacks, it is easy to overlook the basics. At a recent PicDrop offsite, the team spent time in a breathing workshop focused on calming the nervous system.

One technique discussed was the 4-7-8 breathing pattern: inhale in four counts, hold for seven counts, and exhale for eight counts. The more important lesson, however, is not that one specific method works for everyone.

The real practice is finding a healthy way to avoid making decisions while stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Leaders will inevitably face stress, uncertainty, and setbacks. Being able to pause, regulate, and think clearly can prevent overreaction and improve decision-making.

For founders and CEOs, staying calm when things are not going as planned may be one of the most valuable skills of all.