Canadian animated photo-sharing startup, Cinemagram, has successfully closed a series A round of funding that netted the Montreal-based firm $8.5-million for its iPhone app. The mobile app is only available for Apple’s iPhone for now and lets users take videos and turn them into animated images. The user can also apply filters similar to the very popular photo-sharing site Instagram. Cinemagram also has a social network on to which its users can upload their moving images for sharing and viewing.
Cinemagram’s trending page shows the creativity of its users and the many possibilities of the innovative service. Given its ease of use and versatility, Its no surprise the animate image sharing site is gaining so many users even though it launched earlier this year. According to Mark MacLeod, partner at Real Ventures, the site has been getting “hundreds of thousands of users a day.” MacLeod’s firm was part of a group that gave the FounderFuel alum seed money last year.
MacLeod added that the quickly growing user based convinced many large US venture capitalist firms to put money into the firm. The recently concluded round of funding was led by U.S. based VC firm Menlo Ventures. Other large participants included Khosla Ventures and Atlas Ventures.
MacLeod said that, “We really love that in this sort of questionable [business-to-consumer], post-Facebook IPO environment, that there’s still strong enthusiasm for a deal like this.”
Cinemagram founder Temo Chalasani, was running a social news stream platform before Real Ventures became part of the Montreal based Cinemagram. MacLeod spoke about the change of business by saying that, “It’s an example of probably the ultimate pivot.” He also added that a “good portion” of the startups current staff will be moving to San Francisco. Congratulations to the Cinemagram team and FounderFuel.
Source: Financial Post
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