Ethan James Appleby Explores The Artworld Like No Other
Ethan James Appleby, is the CEO and Founder of Vango Art, the first mobile marketplace for art. Having recently launched his podcast series, ‘State of the Art’ it was kicked off my insta-famous artist, Matty Mo. Today sees Appleby interview Founder and CEO at Modsy, Shanna Tellerman.
What is Vango and how did it come about? My background is in design thinking which is a methodology for essentially innovation, starting a lot with empathy, understanding the needs of the user and going through protyping and testing. I entered into a start-up competition to help a friend, who actually got scared and backed out and I ended up going forward with not an idea but with a challenge – how to make art more accessible and from an artist side, how do you help a struggling artist, a talented artist.
But then from my own point of view, me and my friends with have disposable income – why was it is that we’re not buying art, and so I interviewed a bunch of people and ended up winning on an idea of using augmented reality and using dynamic pricing – and mobile, building up Instagram and putting it in people’s hands so they will browse more. I ended up winning the competition and that’s how it started – it evolved into a platform that is more about providing services for artists. We want to take care of all the marketing and really empower an artist. That was four years ago when I won that event and here we are today.
Tell us about your podcasts…I wanted to change the conversation about art and technology – bring awareness and exposure to both the art community that’s afraid of it and maybe rejects it, but also to artists to make them more open minded about it because I think they might still buy into the whole system. We want to make people realize that there’s interesting things going on.
I also cover different angles, so looking at the most tech forward gallerists, artists, collectors, museums and auction houses and then I’m looking at bands in tech and adding fashion into the mix – looking into how they heighten the experience, making it more personalized, and what can the art world learn from you. We’re trying to bring in different voices and views.
Expect these speakers in the series:
Elisabeth Mouchy, Co-Founder and COO of Daylighted
Kira Wampler, CEO of Art.com
Brendan Ciecko, Founder and CEO of Cuseum
Christina Steinbrecher-Pfandt, Artistic Director of ViennaContemporary
Visit iTunes to listen in: State Of The Art by Vango Production: httpss://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/state-of-the-art/id1305467447?mt=2
