PastBook raises $2 Million to Scale-Up its One-Click Photo Books platform
With more than 10x YoY growth in revenue for three years in a row, PastBook announces a new investment round of $2 Million to support its international expansion. PastBook Intelligent Instant Photo Books platform enables consumers to print their Facebook and Instagram memories – in one single click – by automatically and intelligently selecting the best photos and instantly arranging them in a high quality printed photo book.
PastBook: Beautiful 1-Click Photo Book
Amsterdam, NL – 21 September 2017 – PastBook, a fast-growing technology company specialized in frictionless photo book creation, announces today it has completed a new investment round of $2M, bringing the total amount raised by the company to over $2.5M.
The investment was completed in two tranches: an initial convertible note plus a follow-up investment from existing investors (Vortex Capital Partners and other high net-worth dutch individuals, mostly entrepreneurs).
According to investor Dinko Valerio - Founder and former CEO of Crucell, “As a sparring partner and investor, I am very pleased with the roll-out and success of PastBook. The company is clearly poised for further growth, which is why I am happy to continue my support.”
PastBook has been growing exponentially at a rate of 10x YoY in revenue for the last three years in a row, with the majority of customers (80%) being in the USA. The company will use the proceeds of the new investment round to introduce new products and fuel marketing activities for its international expansion through the launch of its Intelligent Instant Photo Book platform in several European countries – including The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and the UK– in addition to the USA, Australia and Canada where PastBook already has a significal commercial presence.
Stefano Cutello, Founder and CEO of PastBook says, “With our Intelligent Instant Photo Book solution focused on Facebook and Instagram, we have proven that we’re un-tapping a new segment in the market: people who always wanted to have a photo book but never found the time to make one. With the additional resources now at our disposal, we can go full-steam in developing solutions that cater to their needs.”
The PastBook Intelligent Instant Photo Book platform provides the most frictionless way to create a photo book from any source. PastBook’s own developed algorithm combines a huge range of data with smart technology to automatically select the user’s best photos (with their captions and dates) from a chosen time period and instantly arranges them into a photo book within 60 seconds, without requiring user interaction.
PastBook’s sophisticated technology and algorithms, combined with its one-click photo book creation engine, sets its service apart from its competitors and the more traditional, mainstream, players in the photo book market: 95% of the books sold by PastBook are instant books, i.e. not edited by its customers (having had the option to make changes). For 50% of the PastBook users, their PastBook photo book is the first photo book they have ever created.
PastBook also recently partnered up with RPI (http://www.rpiprint.com), a provider of premium quality photo book printing services with facilities in USA and Europe, along with partner facilities in Oceania. Through this partnership PastBook has been able to expand its global footprint and reduce shipping times.
Our motto last year was ‘Go Big or Go Home’; with our Intelligent Instant Photo Book solution focused on Facebook and Instagram, we have proven that we’re un-tapping a new segment in the market: people who always wanted to have a photo book but never found the time to make one, like me. With this new round, the motto becomes ‘Big is Never Big Enough’: the additional resources now at our disposal will allow us to scale up faster on operations, marketing and the team – whilst keeping on innovating and building an even more frictionless tool to let people relive and enjoy their memories.
Stefano Cutello, Founder and CEO of PastBook
When I met Stefano 5 years ago I was immediately struck by his clear vision for PastBook. Since then I had the pleasure of witnessing his unwavering tenacity and entrepreneurial energy. As a sparring partner and investor, I am very pleased with the roll-out and success of PastBook. The company is clearly poised for further growth which is why I am happy to continue my support.
Dinko Valerio, Founder and former CEO of Crucell
We are expecting the Western European consumer-ordered photo book market to hit €840M in 2017, up 6% from 2017 and reaching 25.6M photo books. Overall, the big-picture trend is that value growth is outstripping volume growth, due to higher specs, larger photo book sizes, more pages and so on. AI, Curation & Face Recognition have the potential to really drive photo book volume (and maybe value) from smartphones – the time taken to create a photo book has been a partial detractor to the market up until now.
Jeremy Wills, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource (Data from Photobook Futuresource Market Report/Western Europe/July 2017)
PastBook is on a mission to help people preserve and relive memories, that are nowadays scattered between social networks and devices, by offering the most frictionless experience to create a beautiful photo book in seconds.
PastBook’s Intelligent Instant Photo Book platform automatically and intelligently selects the best photos from designated and instantly arranges them into a beautiful photo book, ready to be printed.
