Lapse, An App That Lets You Snap And ‘Develop’ Rolls Of Film With Groups Of Friends, Raises $11M From Gv And Others
Lapse, An App That Lets You Snap And ‘Develop’ Rolls Of Film With Groups Of Friends, Raises $11M From Gv And Others
12/20/21, 10:44 AM
Location
Money raised
$11 million
The relentless march of social media apps’ algorithmic advertising hooks, influencer-leveraged social graphs and UX that begs for endless scrolling have led to viral success and mass-market engagement for the biggest players. But there remains a continuing gap in the market for products that let us create things like photos and share them with selected friends, without all that other social baggage. Today, one of them is announcing a sizable seed round after seeing strong early interest at its launch.
Company Info
Location
london, ontario, canada
Additional Info
That September launch saw Lapse snap up 10,000 users for its beta test, briefly shoot to the top of Apple’s download charts, and rack up a waitlist of 150,000 — traction that partly explains why it was just a matter of months for the startup to quickly pull together a healthy seed round from a strong list of investors.Image Credits: IngridLapse falls into the category of apps that are gaining attention among users and investors for precisely trying to turn some of the mechanics we’ve come to associate with social media on their head.While Instagram, TikTok and others continue to rack up millions of users, and those millions of users are really regular users, there is a definite seam of people (and parents of people…) who are wary of them and their agendas. The startup also raised money earlier this year, even as the same forces that propelled it to viral interest (it was co-founded by popular YouTuber David Dobrik) turned sour (one of Dobrik’s squad was accused of sexual assault) and left many with a bad taste in their mouth (early investors pulled out and gave up profits, and Dobrik was also removed with any association with it). Lapse was founded by brothers Dan and Ben Silvertown, who travelled to Vietnam together and used a point-and-shoot camera while there as a way of disconnecting and unwinding. Lapse is still very much in early stage mode and there is a lot of room for it to be developed further. And in the spirit of having actual choices among different approaches to social apps, I hope that it does.“Lapse is a next-generation private social network, launched at a time when consumers are fundamentally rethinking their relationship with traditional players,” said Matthew Chandler, investment manager at Octopus Ventures, in a statement.