EyeEm has raised $18 million in new venture capital and currently has a community of 13 million photographers across 150 countries.
One of the major uses of the money will be in creating “missions.” These are campaigns marketers launch to find photos they can buy and use. To date, major brands like Mercedes-Benz, Foursquare, Airbnb, Uber, and LiveStrong have run successful missions according to EyeEm cofounder and CEO Flo Meissner.
EyeEm has also recently launched the
Market section of the site. Market is only available in the US at the moment, but the company is actively looking into expanding it into other countries in the near future. To find out more about how it works check this
link.
In another effort to help their contributors earn money EyeEm has posted a currated collection of over 283,000 of the images on its site on Gettyimages.com. These images are listed at prices ranging from $65 and $699 depending on file size delivered.
One of Meissner’s biggest ambitions is to build a sophisticated image search engine. He told Fortune Magazine, “The real challenge, it turns out, is to analyze and understand images.” Last year EyeEm acquired French startup
Sight.io, whose technology helps computers recognize, analyze, and even evaluate an image based on aesthetics.
Leading the new $18 million round of funding is Valar Ventures, a New York based venture capital fund founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel. They have also joined EyeEm’s board. Existing investors Earlybird Ventures, Passion Capital, Wellington Partners, Atlantic Labs and Open Ocean Capital, are also participating in this round.