Some startups seem to rise above the rest quite quickly and gain momentum that is hard to match. Mobile picture chatting app, Snapchat, has done just that and was named the “Fastest Rising Startup” during the 2012 Crunchies from TechCrunch. The startups success as obviously attracted investors and the latest is a cash injection of $13.5 million thanks to Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and others in a Series A round. The New York Times reports that Snapchat is worth somewhere from $60 to $70 million after the latest funding round. This valuation has seen a quick rise from December, when Om Malik of Giga Om fame claimed that the starup was sitting on a $50 million valuation and getting a was $8 million from Benchmark. Another story came from TechCrunch’s Eric Eldon wrote about a Series A round that was over $10 million and was led by Lasky. He gave the company a $70 million valuation.
Evan Spiegel, Snapchat co-founder, confirmed the latest round of investment to TechCrunch and claimed that his company was processing 60 million snaps every day. He also added that users had sent a total of 5 billion snaps. The rapid growth has also led to the addition of 5 new employees and a move to better offices space in Venice Beach, CA.
Spiegel also spoke about what the startup was going to use the new cash for and stated that it would go towards “hiring and servers, definitely. But most importantly, it allows us to remain independent and continue to grow the Snapchat community.”
Snapchat’s growth has also attracted larger competitors who may see it as a threat. A report from The Times claims that Mark Zuckerberg had a meeting with Snapchat in December of 2012. Whatever happened at the meeting is unknown but the world largest social network launched its own version of Snapchat called Poke right after that.
The last funding round for Snapchat came from Lightspeed Venture Partners raised who put $485,000 into the company.
The Snapchat app was developed by four Stanford students as a photo messaging system. The unique feature of the mobile base system is that it a user can take photos, record videos, write text and draw and then send them to other users for viewing with in a set time period. After that the recipients cannot view the sent items and they are deleted from the company’s servers.
Source: TechCrunch
AOL Disables Meeting Management Functionality For Apple’s Mobile Devices Using iOS 6.1 OS
BB10 Arrives in UAE
Lunches So Good Kids Can’t Ignore Them
Invigorating Ginger Smoothie
The U.K.’s Youngest Parents Ever
The new hair Jennifer Lawrence