Foap – Øresund Startups

Double winner FOAP: top 20 in the US app store and prime time spot on US TV

Laura Krenzke-Wohlfart — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 17:30:29 +0000

Foap has done it again and again! Last week it got another (the first one with CNN) prime time television spot with abc on US TV. This propellled it into the top 20 for the most popular apps downloaded in the US app store!

The startup

Foap has created an app that allows smartphone users and photographers to sell their photos online. Since its beginnings in 2012, Foap has greatly developed and has gotten a lot of media attention (abc news, CNN and many more) and is now known worldwide. David Los is behind Foap as co-founder and CEO. Recently there has been some changes at the startup as well, with co-founder Alexandra Bylund no longer having an active role to focus on other endeavors.

The spot

The abc news spot was broadcasted in the abc news series Real Money. The TV spot exemplifies how easy it is to make money with one’s personal snapshots on Foap. Abc news interviews Deanne Valorose who has made more than 300$ of a photo of people parasailing. But even with breakfast, sunset, sport, or nature pictures she has made money with the Foap app.
Due to the growing media attention and consequently a huge amount of new users, Foap has even experienced problem with their servers but this has been fixed now and new users are welcome to download and use Foap.

How does “Foaping”work?

Foaping is very simple; users of the app can upload their snapshots on the Foap platform, and companies can buy the photos for 10$ to use them for marketing. 5$ go to Foap and 5$ to the photographer. There is even a special section for “Missions” where companies can exactly describe the pictures they are looking for. Big companies such as Garnier, Nike, and Master Card are searching for pictures on Foap to use for their marketing campaigns. If you want to find out more and listen to David Los on another abc spot explaining Foap, check it out here.

Reaching media popularity in the US and having achieved a great visibility in the US app store, Foap can be proud of its fast growing customer base and growing recognition. Foap is a great example of a startup from the Øresund region that has made it successful overseas.

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Sweden’s hottest digital entrepreneurs of 2013

Kristina — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 06:48:17 +0000

Sweden is one of the hottest startups countries right now, and Internetworld reveals Sweden’s hottest digital entrepreneurs of 2013. It’s a small showcase of what’s going on right now, and who to keep an eye on in future. Is one of these the next worldwide or niche success story? With 3 startups from the region present in this list, we hope so! We find Foap, InvivoPlay, and Brisk in this top list.

The social photo app people (who we’ve written a bit about here already) take place number 3! Congratulations Foap!

This social life coach web site and app company was founded in 2012 by Malmö entrepreneurs Tina Yildirim, Miha Pulko and Maja Dahlin Lundbergh. InvivoPlay is the business of life improvement and positive psychology. The platform lets users take on challenges to their meet goals, guided by experts and people with valuable life experiences. It’s a movement to create a happier world – a fresh and positive initiative blending the backgrounds and passions of its founders – with tech, psychology and fun, and takes place number 12!

Dexplora, the B2B behind GetSalesDone (and TAT before that) comes in at number 21 with Brisk.io, an app service that works as interface between CRM system Salesforce and an Iphone. Sellers can update data directly by mobile. They’ve got bigger plans to make the service compatible with additional CRM systems. A very handy idea for improving usability of often-neglected CRM software products.

Stockholm cloud based 3D scanning tech company Volumental took place number one, but be sure to check out the full list for a glimpse at a lot of cool startups.

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Øresund Startups: Top50 and state of the region

Karsten Deppert — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:59:17 +0000

Today I held a short lunch seminar on the subject of the most prominent startups in the region. The seminar was held because I was asked to do it, and when I thought about it I realized would be interesting to do. So I did, even if it was with a limited amount of preparations (which I can be accused of, but my main philosophy is: better to do then to don’t). So I did it.

It was held over lunch at CreativeLab, the creative event concept at the SHIP co-working space. Because we have a policy of livecasting whatever we do, you can watch the recording above (Our new Bambuser channel can be found here).

If you want to download the slides, I have made them available on slideshare but there are quite low resolution there, so can be found as pdf here as well.

I am probably describing some of the startups a little bit wrong (sorry for that), and I missed some things in the presentation (corrected in the downloadable versions). But I hope it creates some value for you as the viewer anyway.

Update 1: Some have asked why so many people are walking around and the background noice – the location where the presentation was held is the auditorium in the CreativeLab, called “trappan”, and is just that: the main stairs between the first and second floor. It is designed to be in the middle of the entire place, so that any presentations held there can have drop-in / drop-out flow. A somewhat special enviroment, but I love it, often with a lot of student from Lunds University sitting around in the open areas, and the business and entrepreneurs on the stairs themselves…

Update 2: I should of course list the top 50 startups mentioned as well! Here they are (in the order presented, i.e. in alphabetical order after category):

Series A + B

B2C

Billetto
Miinto
Vivino
WatAGame (GoSupermodel)
Zmags

B2B

Seed level

B2C

B2B

Other prominent startups

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Digital and Technology: Skåne Companies are nominated for top honors at Swedish Mobile Gala

Fiora — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 21:17:30 +0000

Some companies in Öresund region will fight for top honors in the Swedish Mobile Gala in the beginning of November.

Mobile Gala is an event when the year’s most successful Swedish mobile businesses and innovators praised in connection with a major industry party in Stockholm. According to the nominations announced on Monday, some companies from Skåne are listed in several major categories.

Zimpl is one of the four nominees of the category “Innovation of the Year”. The company, which was founded in Lund in 2010, uses a patented technology to make it easier to enter text on mobile phones and computers. This fall, the company has moved its office to Malmö.

Mobile payment has been a hot issue throughout the year and in the category “Mobile Payment of the Year”, Malmö company Mobill, is listed as one of the five nominated companies. The company is including the technology behind the mobile operators’ payment service, WyWallet. The finesse with Mobill’s technology is that it brings together merchants and consumers in the mobile networks, whether by an app on a smart phone, or in the case of SMS payments.

App company Fivestarday from Malmö is one of the five nominees in the category “Best Mobile Marketing of the Year”. Nominations for the campaign Lifebuoy hunt took place in cooperation with Trygg-Hansa.

Malmö company Foap, which has created a picture app for individuals who want to sell mobile photos to businesses, has been nominated in the category “Best Business Service of the Year”. A total of five companies are nominated in this category, but the title of “Best gold mobile of the Year” can just belong to one company.

Mobile Gala is arranged by newspaper companies Tidningen Mobil and Mobil:Business.

Previous Mobile Gala winners which come from the Öresund region, include Lund company Doro and Malmö company TAT .

It will be interesting to find out the final winners and see if any of the companies from the Öresund region can win the top honor. Thus we will continue to follow up with the Mobile Gala final competition in Stockholm in early November.

Click here for the original news from Sydsvenskan (in Swedish).

When: Early November, 2013
Where: Stockholm

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Foap launches on Android!

Kristina — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 10:56:14 +0000

As anticipated with the news of an investment of €1.13M for expansion and Android app development, Foap from Malmö, has just launched on Android, writes TheNextWeb.

The social photo app launched last year for iOS is now also available for android users to sell their images and contribute to crowdsourced photo missions. In the same way it works on iPhone, users can put their images, rated by other users, up for sale for $10 each. Read more about what they’ve been up to on their blog.

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Foap receives 1.13 million euro investment

Iryna — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:31:48 +0000

Foap, Malmö-based photo stock website, has received 1.13 million euro investment from Swedish VC Industrifonden and Maxwell Ventures, reports ArcticStartup. The money will be used for further expansion of sales team, opening a new office in New York and launch of Android app in September. On top of this comes new design for the website and increasing interest for photo missions from brand companies.

“Since launching Foap Missions, the brands we are working with have been coming thick and fast which is fantastic. We’ve already worked with MANGO, Puma, Lavazza, VisitSweden and many more with other major household names in the pipeline. It’s important we build on this and grow our sales teams so this round couldn’t have come at a better time,” says David Los, Foap co-founder, for MobileMarketing.

Foap’s current strategy is to get on-board more international brands which will increase downloads of app and build up a photo stock which at the moment has about 5.7 million pictures. For instance, recent photomission with Mango has generated 4.500 photos of quality content in a week time and created a great company buzz in the social media.

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Foap launches a new global photo mission with Puma

Iryna — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:42:55 +0000

Foap, a service that allows photographers and iPhone users to monetize their pictures by uploading them to the online photo market, has launched a global photo competition together with Puma.

“We are constantly looking for new and creative ways to get closer to our fans. It is fantastic that with foap we have a great and fun opportunity to give something back to our most loyal fans worldwide,” says Rutger Hagstad, Communications Manager at Puma.

The theme of the photo mission is football and what it means to Puma’s customers. Participants may share pictures of football practices, games with friends or any other matches or football related activities. The way to participate is to upload photos via Foap app. The best picture will be purchased for 14.000 kronor. Pictures rated second, third and fourth will receive new shoes model “evoSPEED 1.2”. The remaining pictures will be bought for 70 kronor a piece for Puma image bank for future use. You can join the mission here.

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Win an astronaut-suit with the Foap photo mission

Ischa — Sat, 11 May 2013 17:09:39 +0000

Recently Foap introduced a new concept called ‘Foap missions‘. The idea behind this concept is that companies can use this tool as a way of engagement marketing. Firms can post a mission to build specific marketing content. It’s up to the customers how to translate this into meaningful pictures.

A few days ago Foap launched a mission with an impressive award; an astronaut suit worth $6000. The mission, instigated by Axe, is looking for photos of you and your friends, when you are in the air, somehow, like an astronaut.

The mission can be found here.

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Foap launches photo missions; building brands through co-creation

Ischa — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:13:37 +0000

Brands are increasingly becoming co-created with customers, a trend which made Foap launch a concept called photo missions. The idea behind this concept is that companies can use this tool as a way of engagement marketing. Firms can post a mission to build specific marketing content. It’s up to the customers how to translate this into meaningful pictures. The winner gets a cash price which is 50% of the sale of the photo and in return the firm gets the photo material which is used for advertisement purposes.

Foap’s website shows that it has the brands Rebel, Puma, Interflora, VisitSweden and Hattrick as partners for the photo mission contest. The step to include brand missions seems logical in this era where crowdsourcing, co-creation and engagement marketing are booming concepts.

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Everplace, Startupbootcamp and 5 other on the Europas shortlist

Karsten Deppert — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:35:55 +0000

As we mentioned earlier, the Europas award is soon, and they have now presented their shortlit. The shortlist are the final 200 candidates for the awards, chosen from the more then 1000 nominated. The finalist will now be chosen by the jury, and presented at the award in Berlin the 22nd of january.

From the region the following companies made it to the shortlist:

Best Social, Mobile or Apps Startup – here two of the nominated startups are from the region:

Best European Startup Accelerator/Incubator

Startupbootcamp

Best Gaming or Social Games Startup

Big Bite Games

Best Exit of 2012

Podio (sold to Citrix)

And also in the “Best Nordic Startup” category two of the nominated are from this region:

If you want to know what other nordic startups are nominated then Arctic Startup has a very nice lists, where you also can see other nominated. Otherwise the complete shortlist can be found here.

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