JumpStory, a Danish startup that provides high-performing images, announced that it has secured $1M in a fresh round of funding, bringing the total funding raised to $3M.
The round saw participation from numerous influential entrepreneurs and business people, including Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson, who is also the co-founder of Basecamp, and Joergen Bardenfleth – former Scandinavian CEO at Microsoft.
“JumpStory is a truly novel take on the world of stock photography. One that sells authentic curation of the hundreds of millions of images available online, rather than competing with the existing giants on their turf. There’s real traction, happy customers, and a bright future here!”, Heinemeier Hansson says about his reason for joining JumpStory.
Specialises in authentic images
Founded by Jonathan Low and Anders Thiim in 2018, JumpStory specialises in authentic and high-performing images that look different from Getty Images & Shutterstock.
“We’re super proud and excited that David has decided to jump on board. We want to change the world of stock photos and make them much more simple, transparent, and authentic. The stock photo industry is turning over $5B a year, but at the same time, we feel so much is wrong with the industry, as it is. For example, all the cheesy stock images; the complex licensing terms, and the high prices”, says JumpStory co-founder and Danish serial entrepreneur Jonathan Low.
The startup has also simplified pricing and licensing models to offer a Netflix-style subscription, with one simple license and unlimited downloads for a fixed monthly price.
The company offers a simple subscription model with prices as low as 29 USD/month for unlimited downloads of millions of curated & authentic stock photos, videos, icons, and AI tools. Last year the Danish-founded company grew 230%.
“We use machine learning (AI) to look for this kind of authenticity. So where some tech companies want to use AI to generate fake images, we’re going in the completely opposite direction. We want to contribute to a more authentic and real world. Not a fake or AI-generated one,” says the company.
JumpStory employs staff members from 8 different countries and has thousands of customers globally.
“Currently the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK are our biggest markets. However, from the beginning, Jonathan and I decided that we wanted to grow the company from our HQ in Denmark. We believe that local ecosystems are hugely important because as entrepreneurs we want to give back to the communities where we grew out. We have no plans to move to Silicon Valley”, Anders Thiim explains.
