VSCO Raises $40 Million From Accel Partners
We’ve all heard of VSCO in the mobile photography community, if nothing else for the #VSCO or #VSCOCam on Instagram. Yesterday the company announced a $40 million investment from Accel Partners, a venture firm, renown for its early investment in Facebook.
VSCO; which says that it has a community “tens of millions of people” large — is more than just another app maker. VSCO also sells editing software that emulates the effects of classic analog film photography, which the company says has allowed it to be “cash-flow positive since Day 1,” when the company was founded in 2011.
The company employs 43 people in Oakland, Calif., who help run the other elements of Vsco (whose name rhymes with “disco”), including a community platform where photographers can share their work with one another, and a digital journal that features the artists using VSCO software and tools, among other things.
“We are working to create a new digital age of creativity,” said Greg Lutze, who founded VSCO along with Mr. Flory. “We built something we wanted to use ourselves.”
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
One Comment
Laurence Zankowski
Joanne,
VSCO recently selected one of my images to be part of their curated online galley. This investment means they are going big. I like how they do their app/filters/grid.
Be well
Laurence