Participated · Series A · Apr 2014

Imgur is a meme and storytelling app known for ‘meme dumps’ of 50+ images and GIFs and built-in meme-creation tools, serving roughly 300 million monthly users. The company began in 2009 and spent its first five years bootstrapped before taking venture capital. Imgur’s core product is a unified, unpersonalized homepage and community for memes, art, science, and short storytelling. It plans to integrate Coil’s micropayment Web Monetization tools and eventually launch a premium membership with exclusive features for Coil subscribers. The company raised a $20M venture equity round to diversify revenue beyond advertising and will take a cut of Coil payments. Management says the round was at a valuation higher than last time, and the firm faces the challenge of adding paid features without cannibalizing the free community. Imgur is an image-hosting and sharing service that grew largely through adoption by the Reddit community and operates iOS and Android apps plus a mobile meme generator. The company bootstrapped for five years and is profitable, claiming over 130 million unique visitors per month and that mobile accounts for 30% or more of traffic. Revenue comes from a mix of advertisements (the largest source), donations, pro user accounts, and enterprise image hosting for customers such as Yahoo and Stack Exchange, though Imgur declines to disclose exact revenue figures. Product plans include a content-discovery update due in about a month and longer-term mobile experience improvements, along with better, more selective advertising products. Imgur currently has a 13-person team and expects to double or triple headcount over the next year to support product, ads, and hiring.