Picsart’s seamless experience has been Avoyan’s goal since he built the first tool for his daughter in 2011. “Customers take photos of products and can quickly remove the background, touch-up the image, and post to their site.” “Today’s people’s preferred tool is the phone,” says Sequoias’s Vernal. Ditto for content published on websites, blogs, email marketing and social media ads. As millions of independent businesses, restaurants and local shops flock to the Web amid Covid-19, entrepreneurs rely on Picsart to give their products a glossy, catalog look on critical marketplaces like Shopify, Etsy, eBay, Depop and Doordash. You can also remove wrinkles, red eyes, acne, and digitally slice a few inches off your waistline.īut Picsart is for more than flattering selfies. With a few swipes you can change lighting, and add splashes of color, meme-friendly stickers and animation.

“The younger population has been very involved with it for some time and it’s now prevalent with professions and the creator economy.”Īrtists and amateurs alike use Picsart to touch-up and stylize posts for TikTok, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and Facebook.

“It's got a bunch of really terrific businesses all rolled into one in a global presence, which you don't often see,” says G Squared’s Larry Aschebrook. Mobile-first and easy to use, Picsart has developed AI and Java-based tools to let anyone edit and enhance photos and videos as easily as adding an Instagram filter. As social platforms and smartphones turn everyone into a publisher, hundreds of millions now rely on Picsart to be their design department. Picsart has hitched itself to the two most influential trends in tech–social media and digital commerce. “And they both were a phenomenon around the world before they got popular in the U.S.” It’s a global asset and universal platform used by people everywhere,” says Mike Vernal, a partner at Sequoia and former Facebook VP of Product and Engineering. “Picsart has a lot of similarities to WhatsApp. Avoyan won’t reveal his stake, but remains the company’s largest shareholder. Sources close to the deal say the post-money valuation is roughly $1.5 billion. Today, Avoyan announced his 800-person start-up has raised a $130 million Series C led by Softbank with Sequoia, G Squared, Tribe Capital, Graph Ventures, and Siguler Guff & Company joining in.

Picsart app desktop