Photo and video apps for young adults are a dime these days, so those who show the appeal of 18 fours tend to attract the attention of investors looking for the next Instagram or Tiktok.
In the latest example, the photo sharing app YesThis allows you to share still images with private groups, he said, which has added 2.2 million monthly active users and 800,000 active users, a 30-fold increase in the past six months. In one of the more important indicators Very The company currently claims a 40% date retention rate (i.e. 40% of users are still using the app after installing).
All of this translates into a series of activities between VCs.
TechCrunch learned and confirmed that the startup behind Yope has now raised $4.65 million in valuation for $4.65 million. Goodwater Capital led Inovo VC and Rodseed to the competition with angels including Jean de La Rochebrochard; Greg Tkachenko, who sold the Face Animation Company AI Factory arrives at Snapchat in 2020; Reface app co-founder (and A16Z Scout) Dima Shevts; and former Trojan researcher Andrei Tkachenk.
A source told TechCrunch, adding: “Yope is driving people/VCS a little crazy.”
The application
Yope’s interface is very simple: you take photos in the app, or you pick a photo from the library and send it to a chat where you join or create your own group. There, you will also see images shared by other group members where you can react to the image and chat with the rest of the group. Each group also has a wall, and Yope uses machine learning to cut and stitch images to combine aggregated images in endless photo collages.
To increase engagement, Yope draws inspiration from other social networks in good and bad ways. The Lock Screen Widget allows you to see the latest photos of a group. The stripe feature encourages users to continue publishing. A feature called Recap runs slideshows of shared images – similar to Google Photos and Apple’s Photos app. This app is the first time getting started, making any of these dedicated items intentionally confused, but yes Possible.
The company has established an ambassador program to increase visibility and installation and pay money to power users who have posted information about the app on other platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram. Yope said the ambassadors have produced more than 56 million views. The company declined to say how many installations the videos are powered, but overall, about 70-80% of users are inviting them into the app through others.
You hope to get 50 million active users a month next year, said Bahram Ismailau, CEO and co-founder of Yope.
It also plans further features. The company said it hasn’t started the video yet, but it’s in progress. Another is the daily check-in trigger, which will push users to check their groups and view photos they post and react to them. The company also hopes to make the wall more interactive by allowing users to add stickers, paint graffiti and zoom in/out for days, months or years, and add new formats, such as photos disappearing with lock screen timers.
It also wants to launch a home group format to extend the application’s usage beyond the core foundation of its Gen-Z users: Currently, the average age of users in the application is 18.
While the focus is on attracting more users, Yope is also considering the revenue idea starting with a subscription plan.
A bumpy road to growth
Yope, the app may have been pretty developed lately, but your startup has been around for a longer time, initially not. Founded in 2021 by Ismailau and Paul Rudkouski (studying together at Belarus State University in Minsk), the team worked for years to tinker and search for hits.
An app Salo is a social network chat app that calls itself the “next generation that discusses things”. (Initially, the startup was called Salo.) The duo also built a multi-camera app (similar to Bereal). In 2023, it spins to the product of recording asynchronous video podcasts. Then, in September 2024, the company finally made another hub to create Yope.
The startup has a dispersed team in different locations, including New York, Miami, Lisbon and London (they have offices there). The company said it plans to open a R&D center in the future and is looking for a location.
Yope’s basic hook is a place to share photos and chat in private groups, which seems to fill the gap in the market.
Yes, you can create groups in WhatsApp and Snapchat. Yes, some people have created private group accounts on Instagram. However, image sharing and having some chats while chatting here is not the main use case in any of these huge applications.
More importantly, Instagram seems to have given up on the idea twice as much. anotherInstagram’s own attempt to build a private group is Discontinued production Just five months after the start.
“Instagram and Snapchat have become platforms for curating content. Z Gen users have taken a lot of photos, but only 1% of them are shared,” Ismailau said. He said Yope’s focus is also very different from Snapchat and Instagram. He added that this is specifically about sharing “unfiltered content”.
In fact, there are dozens of others who have tried to build a business around ideas shared by private groups. Recent efforts include thriving capital support Retro and Marissa Mayer Sunlightbut the effort extends to The Path of 2010.
The truth is, none of them really got into trouble. By default, may this be a signal that a private group cannot become a large independent business? Yope believes it might be time to let another crack in the concept.
“At Goodwater, we invest in defined consumer applications, which are a classic example of an important new social behavior,” Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner of Goowater, told TechCrunch in an email. “Yope makes it easy for everyone to share their daily lives with close friends. Their explosive growth expresses the strength of their products and teams.”
Growth does look good for Yope, but the evidence will be how it manages to maintain that. Bereal (another app trying to create a private group atmosphere) has a A hot year or twoeven inspired clones from the meta before growing up Rapidly slow down. (The application ends up being get Through apps and gaming companies Vodou)
The team hopes that a lot of missteps in the category (and with the effort to build large applications) will be an elusive hit.
“They are working hard,” a VC who doesn’t support the startup told us.
