Foap - a Mobile Stock Photo Marketplace - raises 2.3M

Clever business models appeal to iPhoneographers

Foap, a sweden-based mobile stock photo startup has raised an additional 2.3M bringing its total number of funding to $5 million in a year time.

The latest round was led by Gary Vaynerchuk (CEO and co-Founder of VaynerMedia), Jordan Rednor (Upshot Chairman and Protagonist Partner), Jeff Zucker (CNN Worldwide President), and Niklas Ostberg (CEO of Delivery Hero). 

Previous investors includes Industrifonden and Maxwell Ventures. The latest funding will be used for growth, personnel hiring and expansion into the U.S. market. Foap is also backed by Jade Global Investments..

Foap launched in 2012  is a web service that enables users to sell iphone photos via an app. Its motto is to "turn your iphone into dollars." The "Foapers" community as its users are called have already uploaded over 5 million photos. Its popularity is largely due to its business model. Foap lets iPhoneographers and Androidographers monetize their photos by selling them through its marketplace at $10 a snatch and keeping 50% of the revenue. And these days, we are all photographers with vision to share. 

Buyers are mostly name brands (Heinken, Mango, Volvo,MasterCard to name a few) launching new ad campaigns in need to original quick-to-access stock photos and is part of a trend of brands embracing user-generated content (UGC).User-generated content and crowd-sourcing is appealing for brands because by using UGC it makes the brand more relatable, its campaigns seemingly to be more authentic and directly builds  loyalty, giving a whole new meaning to brand ambassadorship. 

Foap founders are David Los, co-founder of Tripl.com, and Alexandra Bylund, former e-commerce Manager at Solresor.se.