"Try to Deliver That Wow Effect" Ahmed Attia - NAV3D - Matterpod Ep. 9

This week we are lucky to be joined by the premier Matterport professional in Egypt. Ahmed Attia of Nav3D in Cairo.

Contact Ahmed via his website here, or you can send him an Instagram message here.

Christian Adams
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Matter Pod. Today we are joined by Ahmed. Ahmed actually is a Matterport provider in Egypt, and so we are really excited to hear Ahmed's perspective on the Matterport industry in that area of the world and hear some of the insights and perspectives that that he has. And so thanks so much for your time on that.

Christian Adams
We really appreciate you joining the podcast here and being willing to talk to everyone about Matterport.

Ahmed Attia
It's my pleasure, Christian. Thanks so much for having me. And I hope that everyone enjoying this small podcast.

Christian Adams
No problem. If you want just to go ahead and get started to kick things off. Do you mind taking a second to introduce yourself who you are and how you got started using Matterport in Egypt.

Ahmed Attia
But I'm about here. I am the founder of NAV3D. NAV3D is the premier Matterport service provider in Egypt. We are working in the Egyptian market since 2018, so it's going to be five years now. Totally. We have more than 2 million impressions for our spaces, which exceeds now 250 spaces. I guess we dealt with about 200 customer in these five years.

Ahmed Attia
My background, I'm Acumatica engineer, I was working for Leica Geosystems for almost nine years in the region and before that for another provider, which is Topcon maybe some guys know Topcon positioning from Japan and I've thoroughly decided to have my own business. I search sometimes. And I found out there's something called Matterport. I started in the Egyptian market. I didn't find someone knowing Matterport or dealing in Matterport in Egypt option market. So I took the lead. I contacted Matterport and we start from there.

Christian Adams
Are you a one man show? Do you have people that work with you as well, or do you do everything kind of on your own right now?

Ahmed Attia
No, I started by myself, but currently we are four people, a small team, but we are four people handling the site works, back office works, admin work and we have part time accountant. That's it.

Christian Adams
Congratulations. That's impressive. I know there are a lot of Matterport providers out there who do it as a side hustle to make just a little bit more income as a hobby almost. What advice would you have for people that are kind of just getting started out that want to grow their team to more of a full-time operation and have employees doing backend office work, etc. kind of similar to yourself? How did you get to that point?

Ahmed Attia
Look, as you mentioned that world wide now, there are a lot of Matterport service providers. So my advice and my pure advice to anyone getting into that field to be professional, to be loyal to the customer, to be a good listener, to deliver what he mentioned in his first pitch was the customer. Try to be frank as much as you can and try to upgrade your knowledge.

Ahmed Attia
Always was the industry was better. Both itself was the other service provider even in your region. So that's it. For that reason, I am not alone in the Egyptian market at the moment, but still I'm number one because I'm always upgrading myself with the new platforms popping up like open house before I use. You can see that I used all the overlays.

The platforms currently exist in the market, so I'm always searching for what makes me different, what makes me unique, what makes the customer go for not 3D. However, it's the most expensive service provider in the market, but still we need enough 3D to do this kind of business for us. That's it.

Christian Adams
Yeah. No, I think that is a great insight. The more that you focus on delivering value to your customer, it provides you with more business opportunities you, which in turn will help you be able to hire more employees as you land more jobs and get more, more busy. And so that's super insightful. One question I have for you is have you been able to purchase a pro 3 camera yet?

Do you plan to, if you haven't purchased one yet, I'd love to hear why you have decided not to buy one.

Ahmed Attia
I'm planning to have one this year. It's already in my pipeline. I didn't get it until now because we're still in the Egyptian market. We are still emerging market. So so far the pro two and sometimes I'm using the PLG still in off a bit, but of course a pro three would be a good added value for our team and our assets. So I guess I before Q2, I will have my own.

Christian Adams
Gotcha. Now that makes sense. I know there are a lot of Matterport providers in different parts of the world who are still waiting on the pro 3 camera and so we'll have to do another podcast episode once you get the pro 3 camera. And I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

Ahmed Attia
I'm always prepared to have the second the second version, not the first one, because, you know, sometimes not all the time, sometimes the first version have some things it needs to be modified or sold like small bugs and this kind of stuff that people faces. So I'm always I'm from those kinds to have always version two, not the early version.

Christian Adams
Totally. It's funny you say that because I actually have talked to you about one Matterport provider who did have issues with his camera and had to actually send it back to Matterport and wait a few weeks because it wasn't rotating. The camera would get stuck in the rotation process and he had to go and bump it with his hand in order to get it to spin properly.

And so I think there is definitely some truth to what you're saying. They're doing the best that they can test, to make sure things are working. But there are always bugs to work out with the product.

Ahmed Attia
When I was dealing in like two systems, I'm from the same industry, so always in first generation from any hardware, sometimes you get some unknown and something you can't find. What's the, what's, what's happening here? What's the solution for that? So always comes in the second upgrade. Is that much better?

Christian Adams
Yeah Totally. I'd be curious to know it's really you. You will have an interesting perspective on Matterport products and cameras due to the fact that you mentioned you work for like for nine years and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the differences between like the bulk versus Matterport and just overall how you would compare the two and why you prefer maybe one product over the other.

Ahmed Attia
Look, as I thought your I am as robotics engineer. So I came purely from this engineering background like is the pulp and its accuracy and its performance. But there's a big part was missing. There is a visual board that you don't have this feeling that I feel the space after scanning it using any of the laser scanners, I don't feel the space because I don't see the actual visuals of the location.

And it's surrounding environment. Matterport Solve this and it goes, you know, first impression always last as we as we see. So when you see a dollhouse view, when you see this for couple tours, which it's beautiful 4K resolution and very, very very fine small thing in movement that's what was missing in the engineering devices overall, not only in liking.

So I found this in Matterport and this was is the biggest motivation for me to go for Matterport as my private business. Not going, for example, for any of the normal and generic solutions providers, which I already know all of them. Of course, this was my my previous experience. But Matterport talks a step over them all, providing a very high image quality with a very nice interface, which now we are completing by using open house, for example.

So that's the solution that the customer needs. And now after adding the Pro three, now I guess nothing is missing matter but still few things. We sent some of them before to the Matterport team as a wishing list and we are waiting. Maybe this coming in the near future.

Christian Adams
Yeah, I agree 100% with what you're saying. I was on a Matterport provider call the other day and somebody was comparing the point clouds and the data accuracy of a like a camera and the pro 3 camera and it was pretty obvious that the accuracy was much better with the like a camera. But the problem was in from our standpoint at Open House, we are also Matterport providers and we do projects for clients on a fairly regular basis.

And what we've seen is exactly what you mentioned, which is what really matters for a lot of the jobs that we do the visual element and the ability to be able to see the details of a space. And what we saw in the Pro three is a huge upgrade from the pro two a lot of times you'll see data stitching errors in the pro 2 camera.

If you look closely at the chandelier or at the stair railings, there will be few data alignment errors. And from the little bit that we've used, the pro three cameras so far, I've only found maybe one or two instances where there was any type of data alignment issue. So the visual quality now on the pro three is, is perfect, which we're excited about.

So I guess one more question for you on this is you mentioned that you still use the bulk for certain things and I'd love to hear when you decide I'm going to use the bulk for this specific thing versus the pro 2 camera.

Ahmed Attia
Actually, it comes mainly for bigger spaces like factories, like large landscape areas, because, you know, currently the Pro two has some issues scanning outside. So you need just to scan before the on or after done. So this kind of restrictions. So in that kind of job, I use the plate as I told you until I get my pro three not normally.

Christian Adams
And then you'll be all in on Matterport essentially.

Ahmed Attia
Yes.

Christian Adams
Do you know if Leica has plans to create a camera that is that solves the issue of the data or the picture visualization like you were mentioning. Do you think that they'll get into that?

Ahmed Attia
I am not sure. But what can I tell you is that like I never stubbings R&D and all of the are coming with the pop-up solutions that you with wishing to have it before two or three years ago. So I'm sure that there's something is coming in the pipeline.

Christian Adams
We'll have to watch for it and see what they come up with. But I agree with you. I think they will for sure try and come up with some sort of competitive product here in the near future. So it'll be interesting to watch that. Yeah. Um, one last question I have for you, Ahmed, is you mentioned that you've done around 250, 250 tours for around 200 clients and that's super impressive.

I'd love to hear any advice you have regarding how to find new business and how you go about trying to find people who want to create virtual tours. And then how do you go about selling them on actually doing the project?

Ahmed Attia
Look, all is referring to how you position your service in the market. For example, in the Egyptian market so far, we still position the scanning or we call it most of the time 3D shooting towards normal photography and videography. So what I'm telling to the customer is why do you pay this X amount of money for getting some pictures or some videos while you can be just X plus a small amount or maybe two x, but having a bunch of outputs like picture footage, the pictures videos, workable models that you can just put it in your website or put it in your social media platforms and everyone can explore your space.

He This is the point. How to convince the customers that yes, they will pay me more and you would pay for something. Still, maybe some people think that's a niche product, but you will get there very while we fix that. That is a point try always to deliver to the customers that in 2023 now you should be different.

You should not only have very nice edited pictures from a professional photographer. No, that's not enough anymore. He is the point. You need your client to have always access to your space, whatever you want, whenever you want from any smart device. That's it.

Christian Adams
If I am understanding you correctly, you're saying that when you approach a client and talk to them, you say, Hey, just for a little bit more money, you can have this 3D virtual tour and allow your customer base to walk around and explore your space. So with the 3D tour, I'm going to I'm going to be able to extract photos and videos from the 3D content and give them to you.

And then in addition, you'll also have a fully immersive virtual tour. Is that correct?

Ahmed Attia
You are right, and that's what make us still the premiere provider in the market because we are the only providers that deliver a complete bundle. Even for the engineering sector, we are delivering high accurate to the WG goes for the out of the space if it's too quiet. For example, currently we are working with some construction companies and some designers capturing their spaces in the very early stages of construction and to have it as an archive for the project.

Why is the project is going on? So always try to find some new business channels that makes you always filling the gap and giving you back the required revenue for sure.

Christian Adams
What use case or what industry are you guys currently seeing and having the most traction? And you mentioned construction design. What is the main thing that people are using your 3D services for right now?

Ahmed Attia
Currently, most of my people or my customers are using the service for getting the impression of the space and its early stages, like construction and interior designers, as it's a very good market at the moment also as well, the retail spaces, retail spaces. Still, people want to do something related to online shopping and get an impression of the current promotions and current discounts.

So when you have an online store that makes them very happy and satisfied and the makes maybe the decision two times faster and people start to love this, we are working with many of our brands now for clothing and the fashion and this kind of stuff, and they are very, very satisfied with the product, especially now something is coming in the pipeline regarding add to Cart product using the overlay of open house.

Christian Adams
So I completely agree with you. I think there's a huge market for visualizing spaces is at the early construction phase and as well as retail. I think it's still a teeny bit early. I think that as time goes on, people will get the vision more and more. I know that Apple is planning on launching their VR air or mixed reality headset in the spring.

And so I think as you get more hardware products like that that get announced and those become adopted, brands and businesses will look to more 3D type content and try and understand how they can begin adopting that content with their business models. And so we're excited to see how that progresses and how it goes. And hopefully as those devices become more mainstream and in the household, the more people that this 3-D type content demand continues to go up.

Ahmed Attia
You're right. You're right.

Christian Adams
Well, Ahmed, we appreciate you taking the time to chat. For all the people that are listening, if they want to get in touch with you, if they want to send you an email or ask you a question, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

Ahmed Attia
Post my email address double availability, i.e. at the three the dot com or through our website.

Christian Adams
Gotcha. Do you guys have an Instagram account or anything like that?

Ahmed Attia
Yes, of course. Now we've got the Egypt Facebook novelty, the virtual tools, LinkedIn, and that's really awesome.

Christian Adams
We'll go ahead and give NAB, 3D and all that to follow and if you have any questions, reach out to him. Ahmed, we really appreciate the insight that you've given to. Our audience today, and we'd love to do it again here soon.

Ahmed Attia
Sure. Thank you so much for having me and enjoy your big.

Christian Adams
Thank you. You as well. We'll talk to you later.