The crowdsourcing site
FOAP has raised a fresh $2.3 million in funding from some interesting names like CNN Worldwide President, Jeff Zucker; CEO and Co-Founder of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk; Upshot Chairman and Protagonist LLC Partner, Jordan Rednor; and CEO of Delivery Hero, Niklas Ostberg, among others. The company raised another
$1.5 million in August. Total funding now stands at roughly $5 million but they’re not quite ready to call this a Series A yet.
Launched in 2011, FOAP has approximately 500,000 total users and is adding about 300,000 new images every week. The company has kept the price of its photos at a flat $10 per image since launching which suggests they haven’t found the need to drop the price. However, they have been unwilling to provide any indication of actual number of sales. There are no indications that individual creators are earning any significant money, but the amateurs who are supplying most of the pictures are more interested in knowing that someone liked their image enough to use it than it the revenue it generates. Contributors get a 50% royalty.
Additionally, FOAP allows brands to harness the platform for “Missions” where marketers can encourage the community to take photos of their brands in a certain context for use in advertising or social media campaigns. This works for the companies because they get to focus the attention of social media users on their brands, and it helps image creators focus their efforts on pictures that might generate income. The company has run 200 missions from Fortune 500 companies and brand advertising agencies since it released the concept in 2013.
“I know the value of Foap’s offering firsthand, having been one of the company’s early adopters,” said Vaynerchuk. “By creating a marketplace of user-generated, authentic photography, Foap offers brands real images at a fraction of the cost of traditional stock photography but with an exponentially higher rate of engagement. Foap’s CEO David Los is answering a crucial market need with this offering and I’m excited to be a part of the company’s future.”