FORBES.COM JUNE 30, 20 1920
FRONTRUNNERNEXTBILLION- D
OLLAR^ STARTUPS^ BY^ HAYLEY^ CUCCINELLO.TIMOTHYARCHIBALDFOR^ FORBESJUNE 30, 20 19n 2013,
Joel Flory
and Greg
Lutze sat
down for
dinner at Park Tavern,
an upscale bistro in San
Francisco, with a third
man, Insta gram cofounder
Kevin Systrom. Flory and
Lutze had launched VSCO,
a photo-editing app, about
a year earlier, and there
were more than 2 million
photos on Instagram with
the hashtag #vscocam—
meaning users had edited
those pictures on VSCO
and then posted the snaps
to Instagram even though
Systrom’s app had its own
integrated editing tools.
Systrom was impressed
and was toying with the
idea of acquiring VSCO.
But the trio hadn’t made
it as far as discussing a
price—VSCO probably
wouldn’t have fetched
more than eight fi gures
then—when Flory and
Lutze realized that Systrom
likely wouldn’t keep VSCO
as a stand-alone app but
would roll its tech into
Instagram. “For VSCO, we
had a much larger mission
and vision,” says Flory, 39.
Six years later, 200
million Instagram posts
have been tagged with
#vscocam. Oakland-based
VSCO’s revenue has
exploded, doubling in 2018
to $50 million. It has raised
$90 million from Accel
Partners, Glynn Capital and
others at an estimated $550
million valuation. Flory, the
company’s chief executive
offi cer, and Lutze, the
“chief experience offi cer,”
each own about 21% of the
startup.SHARPER
FOCUS
VSCO is a popular and sophisticated
photo-editing app. What more can it be?Next Billion-Dollar Startups
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