Social media app VSCO became a cultural sensation a few years ago VSCO girly trend, announced the appointment of a new CEO on Monday. Current VSCO President Eric Wittman will take over the top job, and former CEO and co-founder Joel Flory will serve as executive chairman.
Flory told us that Whitman is an “experienced operator with a passion for our space and, more importantly, a vision for the future.” wealth In an exclusive interview.
VSCO started as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and has since evolved into a full-fledged social media application.The company has been on a journey reinvent Ever since the VSCO girl trend circa 2019, the style of affluent teenage girls has been heavily influenced by the app’s content, pushing it to the pinnacle of youth culture. Recently, it has stood out for its apparent distaste for ads and algorithmic feeds, arguing that by prioritizing engagement it encourages the worst in social media.Since its heyday of popularity among teenagers, VSCO has strived to be The platform of choice for visual artistsBy combining the online capabilities of social media with real art and design tools, we are attracting more and more creative people of all types.
“We know that for the future of VSCO, we need to respect the past and what we have created,” Flory said wealth. “But to truly succeed, it takes someone with a fresh, unique vision for the future, and Eric stands out among them.”
VSCO currently operates on a freemium model. Users who decide to upgrade from the free version have access to a more sophisticated set of editing and design tools.As a private company, VSCO does not release revenue figures, but a spokesman said wealth It has positive EBITDA, which is a proxy for cash flow. The company added that it had raised about $100 million in venture capital funding from the likes of Accel and Glynn Capital, which Pitchbook estimated was valued at $550 million as of 2015. (VSCO declined to provide a current valuation.)
Wittman becomes VSCO president in June 2021 and is expected to eventually succeed Flory, who has served as CEO since co-founding the company in 2011 with co-founder Greg Lutze. “That was part of our early conversations,” Wittman said.
Wittman is a seasoned technologist specializing in creative tools manufacturing companies, having spent 15 years at Adobe before becoming general manager of development tools at Atlassian. He subsequently went on to serve as chief operating officer of Figma, the design software company acquired by Adobe for $20 billion in September 2022. (Wittman left Figma before it was acquired by Adobe in 2018).
“When you look at Eric’s career, you see these great companies have expanded their products, core foundations and use cases to provide tremendous value and become absolutely essential companies and tools for creatives,” Flo said. Li said. “That’s exactly what we’re seeing here.”
Flory originally planned to begin his transition plan in 2019, but the pandemic delayed his plans. He resumed the process again in November 2020, eventually hiring Wittman in June 2021. After Wittman was hired as president, the two worked with an executive coach and built an effective working relationship until they were ready for Flory to fully hand over the reins.
“We’ve been working on this for the past two years,” Flory said.
He said Flory will remain as executive chairman and will have a role in the company focused on “long-term strategy, financing, M&A, corporate strategy and a true long-term product vision.”
Wittman’s first priority is fine-tuning the product in a subscription model. In particular, its recently launched VSCO Pro package includes more features than its previous Plus subscription and costs $59.99, compared to the previous price of $29.99. Wittman said VSCO Pro now accounts for almost 20% of the company’s business. Another of his top priorities is developing a set of tools to take advantage of the booming creator economy and help creators advance themselves, ultimately allowing them to make a living from their work.
“This is still a very underserved part of the market, and many creators today are frustrated with many of the more traditional platforms,” Wittman said.
Early stages of these promotional tools could include connecting creators with people interested in purchasing their work, as well as potential setups that allow brands and companies to license content directly from creators. Flory and Wittman believe that VSCO used to be an editing software and eventually evolved into a social media platform, and built its next iteration on this basis, becoming a “channel for creators to make money.”
“Why Eric, why now, why all this?” Flory said. “We realized that not too many companies had the opportunity to grow within a decade of market opportunity.”
Svlook
