Facetune developer Lightricks, who operates over a dozen subscription-based photo and video editing apps for iOS and Android, now has $ 130 million in new funds to grow its business. The company’s newly announced Series D round, comprising $ 100 million in primary and $ 30 million in secondary funding, now values the company at $ 1.8 billion. To date, Lightricks has raised $ 335 million.
The new round was jointly led by the New York VC firm Insight Partners and Hanaco Venture Capital and includes the new investors Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham and Shavit Capital. Existing investors Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Clal Tech, Harel Insurance and Finance and Greycroft also attended.
The company’s final round of funding was to raise $ 135 million prior to the pandemic that marked the company as a unicorn.
Jerusalem-based Lightricks is best known for its photo editing app Facetune, which gives consumers Photoshop-like retouching tools. The app quickly gained in popularity as online influencers tweaked their Instagram photos to look more polished, perfect, and flawless. That growth has been controversial, however, as some have argued that photo editing apps like Facetune pushed airbrushing too far and contributed to body image issues that Facebook internal research now shows could negatively impact teenage mental health.
But Facetune was just the beginning of what has since grown into a light tricks mobile editing empire, at a time when everyone is trying to look their best online and create compelling content. Over the years, the company has released the more powerful Facetune 2 along with other creativity and mobile photo apps that didn’t focus on selfies. It also expanded its product line beyond the creator crowd to provide a range of tools to online marketers and small businesses. And last year, Lightricks responded more directly to the growth of online video as a form of self-expression with a new selfie retouching tool called Facetune Video – essentially the Facetune for the TikTok era.
Credit: Light tricks
The company also benefited from the Covid-19 bans as more people participated online and creators as a group established themselves as a way for brands to reach consumers. During peak periods, the company saw the usage of its apps in the US increase by 90%. Meanwhile, downloads for its popular Videoleap video editing apps have increased 70% since the pandemic began as TikTok adoption increased too.
Across its suite of apps, the company now has 29 million monthly active users, of which over 5 million are paying subscribers. Its users export around 78 million monthly exports on average, suggesting the considerable influence of Lightricks on the creator economy. In 2021, Lightricks had sales of over $ 200 million and plans to increase that number by 40% in the coming year.
To this end, the company’s strategy will change. Instead of just developing its own apps, it is now looking for possible acquisitions.
“Our plan is to grow into a one-stop-shop creator platform that supports creators all the way from content creation to monetization,” said Zeev Farbman, CEO and co-founder of Lightricks. “To this end, we are expanding our acquisition activities and at the same time developing other services in-house. To begin with, we’re planning three to five acquisitions, each with a budget of tens of millions of dollars. However, we are also looking for bigger ticket deals if there is enough conviction on both sides, ”he states.
Credit: Light tricks
The company will also improve its own technology to develop tools and services to aid all creators in the production and monetization of content, and it will grow its team.
Lightricks currently has 460 employees and plans to add 60 more by the end of 2021. The longer-term goal is to grow the team to 1,000 employees by the end of 2023, who work in various roles such as developer, designer and marketing. While most of this growth has so far taken place in Jerusalem, the company plans to expand its teams locally in Haifa as well as internationally in London and Shenzhen over the next two years. It can also add other locations through mergers and acquisitions.
The UK office is now the largest outside Lightricks headquarters with 23 employees. That number is set to climb to 35 by the end of the year and closer to 50 or 60 by the end of 2022, with growth focused on producing the company’s new photo app, as well as customer experience and marketing teams that previously only operated in Israel.
In the US, Lightricks is focused on content.
“Our US-based operations will primarily focus on our content efforts, which provide a wide range of original, acquired and co-produced content to inspire, educate and entertain creatives throughout their careers,” noted Farbman. “This includes written, video, audio, short and long form, entertaining and informative content,” he says.
Investors say they see the potential for Lightricks to continue growing as the creator economy is booming.
“The creator economy has changed the way we as a society experience social networks,” said Pasha Romanovski, co-founding partner of Hanaco Ventures, in a statement. “The audience consumes information on a daily basis via the various content channels. Lightricks’ platform offers developers a broader, more professional and higher quality set of tools for optimizing content. At a time when content creators are monetizing content on social media to a new level, it is clear that Lightricks’ platform is capable of creating a one-stop shop that matters to its users ” , he added.
