What is Flipagram? Flipagram Review

Flipagram Startup Story

Josh Feldman and Raffi Baghoom are employees of a digital advertising company. In their spare time, they designed an iOS app called Flipagram. At the beginning, the app was maintained by only three people: Josh Feldman, Raffi Baghoom and Chief Technology Officer Brian Dilley.

In September 2013, Farhad Mohit, now the co-founder and CEO of Flipagram, met the original team of Flipagram for the first time at a sushi restaurant in Studio City. The four of them hit it off, and Mohit even paid directly to buy Flipagram.

Flipagram's Profit Model

Flipagram currently has no advertisements, and its main source of revenue comes from song recommendation fees. When users add music to their videos, Flipagram prominently displays the iTunes or Spotify link for the entire song, making it easier for users to purchase it. This allows the music platform to collect recommendation fees.

In addition, if users want to remove the Flipagram watermark from their video works, they also have to pay $1.99, which is another source of income.

Instagram Features

Flipagram will select pictures from your Instagram, sort them, add captions to them, and then share them with friends and family via email. The app only requires a web view, and it can quickly generate slideshows.

Flipagram financing

In January 2014, billionaire Sequoia partner Michael Moritz and his colleague Tim Lee met with Mohit at his home in Los Angeles. In February, Sequoia Capital, KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) and Index Ventures jointly raised $70 million in Series B funding for Flipagram.

In July 2015, KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital jointly invested 70 million in Flipagram.

Flipagram Development

By the end of 2014, Flipagram had 33 million monthly users. It took Facebook at least three years, Snapchat two years, and Flipagram only one year to reach this level of users.

In the summer of 2015, Moritz and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins joined Flipagram’s board of directors, marking the first time since Google that two venture capitalists have joined the board together.

By 2015, Flipagram was still among the top ten photo and video app downloads in the iOS store in the United States. In the third quarter of 2015, the number of Flips created by app users increased by 165% year-on-year.

At the end of 2015, Flipagram laid off 20% of its employees.

After 2016, Flipagram's intention to sell was known to everyone. The only thing that was unclear was the price.

In February 2017, Toutiao announced the full acquisition of Flipagram, an American mobile short video creator community.

References

• 1. What kind of company is Flipagram, which Toutiao acquired overseas? : Tencent Technology [cited on 2017-02-02]