500px, a Toronto, Canada-based premium photo-sharing platform, closed a $8.8m Series A funding.
Backers included Andreessen Horowitz, Harrison Metal, Creative Artists Agency, Rugged Ventures, Dustin Plett and ff Venture Capital. In conjunction with the funding, Michael Dearing, founder, Harrison Metal, will be joining 500px’ board as a director.
The company plans to use the funds to enhance its current products, offer new products and services to help photographers showcase, share, organize and monetize their photos, opening a new office in the Bay Area and hire developers, designers and brand managers.
With 2.5 million users, 500px has more than doubled its community in the past year and currently gets over a billion page views each month.
Tier one investment
Founded in late 2009 by photographers and entrepreneurs CEO Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev, 500px is a premium photo-sharing platform for aspiring and professional photographers and allows users to discover, share, buy and sell photos. It has over 2.5 million users and over a billion page views each month.
Yesterday the company announced a collaboration with Microsoft that begins with featuring 500px photographers on the Bing homepage.
FinSMEs
07/08/2013