By using face recognition technology, the MSQRD allows applying various filters to your selfies or real-time videos and sharing them on social networks. MSQRD also has a filter store where any designer can have its artwork ready to be tried out on people’s faces.
Yesterday GoalEurope tweeted twice about them, something which we’ve never done before:
#Startup from #Belarus rocks. Will it replicate or beat the success of #Looksery from #Ukraine (bought by Snapchat) https://t.co/5hRx8OTxc7
— GoalEurope (@goaleurope) February 26, 2016
#MSQRD app with fun filters made by a #Belarusian #startup is on an American TV show https://t.co/OyKBlX7s2Q pic.twitter.com/gR42Ew15CI
— GoalEurope (@goaleurope) February 26, 2016
And not in vain: a few hours later – surprise! - VC.ru announced that MSQRD, an entertainment selfie app developed in Belarus, raised a seed round from undisclosed private investors. The exact amount is not made public, but the founders said that it has six zeros in it, and the valuation is “tens os millions of dollars”.
MSQRD is in TOP of the App Store, along with Instagram and Facebook Messenger
Sergey Gonchar, Eugene Zatepyakin and Eugene Nevgen created the app in 48 hours during Garage48 Minsk hackathon at the end of November 2015, and the iOS version was released in December. In the first month after the release, the app got more than 1 million downloads. And then the user base grew as a snowball to 10 million in the following month. Now it is in the top free iPhone app in the USA, and the TOP-1 app in more than 50 countries. The developers got a lot of visibility in Eastern Europe when popular artists and comedians used the app to create fun viral videos, and the promotion abroad follows a similar strategy. The Android version of the app is in Beta testing and will be released soon.
The monetization is likely to rely on branded filters and MSQRD’s SDK, which allows integrating video filters in any software on any platform, but, of course, think video chats first (and let’s recall Looksery’s acquisition by Snapchat)!
Cover image source: www.elvisduran.com
