In 2024, it could cost a lot of money to find an analog camera, buy the film (and possibly a special battery), and take the photos, and you'll have to pay to develop them. . But there was a charm and simplicity to the experience. For those nostalgic for the old days, a startup called Lapse is offering smartphone users an alternative. Once a photo is taken, there is no opportunity to edit or retake it, and it must wait until it is “developed” and cannot be shared with a selected group. Friends if you choose.
Lapse has gained some traction in the market, with millions of users, 100 million photos taken each month, and a coveted consistent spot in the top 10 rankings of photo apps in the US app store. It has earned a top 10 ranking. Now the company has announced a new $30 million funding round to take its ambitions to the next level.
Greylock, a renowned consumer app investor who was an early backer of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok (when it was Musical.ly), and LinkedIn, co-led the round with the equally iconic DST Global Partners. His previous backers GV, Octopus Ventures and Speedinvest also participated. The total comes after $12.4 million in seed and pre-seed funding raised in 2021, for a total of just over $42 million and a valuation of about $150 million, according to sources.
Lapse's plans include further processing behind the scenes for “unedited” photos, adding features around the photo experience, and eventually moving to video.
CEO and co-founder Dan Silvertown said in an interview that there may be some monetization in the future. It hasn't been mentioned yet, but it's breaking away from the usual path social apps follow by leaning into advertising. “The feeling and the initial hypothesis is not to do it,” he said.
While the company's ethos may have an old-school vibe, some of the mechanics of how the app works are quite different.
Some of these are interesting technical details born from real-world experience. As previously reflected, Mr. Silvertown realized that while Ben was traveling in Asia, he longed for the freedom of a point-and-shoot camera without being tied to constantly looking at a photo, and his younger brother Ben and Co-founded the app. I use apps to see who has liked my photos, what other people are doing, and most of all I live my life capturing and sharing moments with apps. It seems like there is, and not the other way around. So he and Dan started looking at ways to recreate the analog experience through smartphones.
While the app doesn't have the ability to edit photos or retake snaps multiple times if you're not happy with the initial results, there's some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes.
“There are about 12 different steps in processing a photo,” he said. Some of them incorporate elements of his computer vision, while others are built in-house or use third-party technology. He says they all basically aim to understand what's in the photo you're taking, so you can optimize how the subject and overall composition look as a result. It is said that it is designed to. (Note: When exporting photos to other apps, there are a set of editing features you can use to process the images yourself, but these are not meant for sharing natively in his Lapse.)
On the other hand, some of the app's mechanics are less than admirable.
Lapse has come under some scrutiny — read our story here — for how it used growth hacking and forced invites to expand app installs. This technique definitely contributed to the increase in the number of users. It briefly shot to the top of the US and UK iOS app stores (the only markets and only platforms where this technique is available), but how sustainable and user-friendly it is is debatable . If the app itself doesn't offer anything useful or interesting to keep you using it, any company can use it in the long run.
For Lapus, this lesson was definitely learned, but Silvertown still maintains in its defense that startups had to start somewhere. Even though I downloaded the app, I don't have any contacts using it. Where do we go from there?
These days, the app has taken on more of a “journaling” character, essentially offering users a way to create albums that can be kept private or shared with a small group, but the use of There is no longer a need for forced invitations to do so, he argues. At least because now there's a critical mass of people out there finding virality for themselves.
But in my own experience, for brand new users, perhaps especially consumers who are sensitive to sharing their data on social apps they don't yet know, sifting through the dark patterns of apps and how to use data without sharing. was still difficult to find. At least some names and numbers.
If you force one piece of data out of someone, you will quickly lose trust. (This is what one of my grumpy and irritated friends said when I downloaded the app and asked him to contact me.)
This brings us to another important point. We are currently at a remarkable crossroads in the world of consumer apps. Consumers have become conscious of what they are giving up (essentially large amounts of personal data) when using most consumer apps. Sure, the most powerful companies in this industry are very large with billions of users, but for the most part (perhaps the biggest exception is Snapchat), they're more likely to share with a small group of friends. It goes far beyond the focus on , and there are very few additional features that take the user away from anything that looks authentic. Additionally, some of the most popular apps appear to be slowing down in terms of growth and engagement.
Considering all this, is there still room for at least two players who want to offer users an easier alternative? BeReal, Dispo, and several others who have worked on this idea? Although the company seems to be losing momentum for now, Lapse believes there is still a lot to come with this interpretation of the concept.
And it appears that its investors are as well.
“What's really interesting is that a lot of the big platforms, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, started out as places to catch up with friends, and then over time, we started using them for other things. It's a site where you can find out about today's news, entertainment, and what's going on with influencers,” Greylock general partner Jacob Andreu said in an interview.
“I think what's interesting about this is it leaves a hole where there's no place you can go just to check your friends' profiles and see what they're up to. It's also a great starting point because all these really big platforms started from there.'' , we believe we can lower the barriers to sharing and use that to create a great place to share with friends.