After achieving the top of the Apple App Store, Poparazzi as well as its founders Alex as well as Austen Ma, are set to get funds through venture capital investors who will appraise the new app for sharing photos at up to $135 million in the first few days following the app’s launch.
Benchmark is expected to lead the next round of funding in Poparazzi. According to multiple sources in Forbes that it is attracting the interest of a group of similar companies with a focus on consumer technology who have recently signed up partners to the application. The Bay Area-based company responsible for Snap, Twitter, and Uber has pledged to value Poparazzi at over $100 million, sources claim, and one source says that Benchmark’s proposal could be $13.5 million to acquire 10 percent of Poparazzi. The round is likely to close between $15 million to $20 million after the individual angel investors, and prior investors of the parent company of the app TTYL are taken into account.
Benchmark declined to respond to requests for comment. TTYL co-founders Alex as well as Austen Ma, and seed investor Floodgate did not respond to requests for information. The investment round had been first published via Eric Newcomer earlier on Thursday.
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Photo App Poparazzi Set to Attain $100 Million Plus Value in Benchmark-Led Round Days Following the App’s Launch
The company is based located in Marina del Rey in the Los Angeles area; the Ma brothers created TTYL after their time at UCLA to create an audio-centric social networking platform that was influenced by, at the very least, Apple’s AirPods. TTYL has raised $2.5 million of seed money, and the Ma brothers were featured on Forbes’ 30 under thirty list in the field of Consumer Technology for 2020.
In advance of the launch in May, Ma and Ma opened the app to 10,000 beta testers for a couple of months which saw users upload more than 100,000 photos as per Ma and Ma’s blog article that announced its availability to the public.
The basic idea behind the app: Users don’t create their personal profile pages; however, they upload pictures of their friends. Their own profile pages are developed by friends who post photos of them. The app requires access to a user’s contact list and follows those who are already on the app, with numbers that a new member has saved. Instant networking with Poparazzi is a great way to increase engagement for new users. However, it can also pose privacy issues, as TechCrunch recently pointed out.
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The investment in Poparazzi is not too long after another prize that sought to fund a new photo-sharing app called Dispo that immediately went into a disaster. The app was launched in February. Axios revealed that Dispo, a popular app founded by the popular YouTube celebrity David Dobrik, raised $20 million, with 200 million in valuation. When allegations of assault on an ex-partner of Dobrik’s were revealed, Dobrik stepped away from the company, and the company’s investor of less than one short time, Spark Capital, announced it would cut ties to the app.
And, in a twist of fate, the launch of Poparazzi and its upcoming funding round are almost one year following Clubhouse, the audio-based social media platform which TTYL was an early model that brought in millions of dollars for Andreessen Horowitz, with the time of launch, an estimation of approximately hundred million. (The app is currently valued by the company and other private markets investors at around $4 billion..)
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Although Poparazzi is still trying to find angel investors, according to people who know about the round, the app has seen a surge in popularity by tech influencers who are invested in the business but not. Product Hunt co-founder and Weekend Fund founder Ryan Hoover tweeted to reveal his fund’s status as an investor. During the seed investor Floodgate Ann Miura-Ko said, “they’ve been studying and working for three years. Amazing to see this live,” before quipping she was “too old to grasp the concept.” SignalFire investor and reporter Josh Constine called Poparazzi “the ideal application to enjoy a Hot Vax Summer” in a blog article. Investor Chris Paik of Pace Capital, who explained that he’s an “enthusiast,” called the app an application to “define the summer of 2121.”
