Imgur announced this morning that it has raised $40 million in a series A round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. General partner, Lars Dalgaard will take a Board of Directors seat with the company.
Reddit, which gives Imgur more exposure than anywhere else on the web, also contributed to the round. The company calls this “an appropriate nod to founder Alan Schaaf originally building Imgur as a ‘simple image sharer’ for the Reddit community.”
“Imgur was originally launched on reddit, and we are honored that the reddit community have chosen Imgur to be their de facto image sharer,” Schaaf, who is also the company’s CEO, tells WebProNews. “Until now there was no formal business relationship but now there is, and we are really excited to work closer with reddit to bring some new exciting mutually beneficial features to members of both communities.”
Read our discussion with Schaaf last year about Imgur’s relationship with reddit here.
The company says it will use the funding to accelerate its internal growth, drive continued product development and innovation, and to grow its community worldwide.
“We will be growing our teams and hiring for some key roles in engineering, sales, marketing, HR, and finance,” Schaaf tells us. “We want to make sure that we hire engineers as fast as possible to continue to build and improve our product and grow our community, first and foremost. The business will continue to follow that growth.”
When asked about new product features we can expect down the road, Schaaf tell us they can’t discuss too much about plans for upcoming features, but they are “hoping to release a new feature that improves content discoverability in the next month or so.”
He would not disclose how much reddit is contributing to the funding.
“As a company that bootstrapped our way to profitability and had a blast doing it, we really weren’t out looking for money at all,” he said in the announcement. “That said, as soon as we started talking with Marc and Lars, we knew this was a great fit. Lars completely gets what we’re trying to accomplish, and has pledged to help us conquer the Internet. The only sad part is that we won’t be eligible for any more Best Bootstrapped Startup Crunchies.”
“We’ve been watching Imgur for years, and the way Alan and his team have committed to building for the community is truly impressive,” said Dalgaard. “It’s rare to see a company so committed to preserving an excellent user experience, and it’s no accident that this community has flourished. We hope to provide resources and guidance to help Imgur continue down this path, with the freedom to do even more to accelerate product innovation and community growth.”
Last year, Imgur finally launched its mobile apps and a meme generator tool. In September, the company announced that it had reached 100,000,000 unique monthly visitors. The apps had seen hundreds of thousands of downloads in the first months of availability.
Earlier this year, it launched a mobile app for the meme generator, as well as an analytics feature to let users track the viral success of their images.
Image via Imgur