ReSnap, an online photo book startup from Nijmegen, snapped up its competitor, the Startupbootcamp alumnus Bundle. Both Dutch startups focus on developing smart and easy solutions to automatically create smart products – like photo books from someone’s growing amount of images. The purchase price remains undisclosed.
“Google Photos of the Netherlands”
ReSnap enables consumers to create fully automated photo books online in a couple of minutes, while Bundle was seen as the “Google Photos of the Netherlands”. Their iOS and Android apps help users group photos with friends and family in smart albums. By acquiring Bundle, ReSnap’s smart photo book technology based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon be available on smartphone, too. Enabling everyone to easily create a photo book from any set of photos from any device.
Exponential growth
The acquisition of Bundle follows after a year of exponential growth for ReSnap. Last December, their revenue grew with almost 2500% compared to a year before. The shareholders of Bundle, which includes the founder of Albelli, see the acquisition as a big step forward. Michel op ‘t Landt, co-founder of Bundle: “ReSnap is the only company worldwide that developed a subjective selection technology for photos. They managed to successfully create an artificial intelligence for this. We realized that if you want to be successful as a photo company, you simply need this kind of technology. Combined with their recent success, it was a no-brainer for us to become part of ReSnap.”
International expansion
The acquisition is part of ReSnap’s international growth strategy. Besides the Benelux, the startup is growing rapidly in the US, UK and Australia. Thomas Beguin, co-founder of ReSnap: “A lot of traditional photo book players assume they make photo book creation easier by launching an app, but this doesn’t solve the real problem. An app gives you access to the photos on a smartphone. But to solve the real photo problem, you need technology to help people cut through someone’s photo mess. Our self-learning algorithms solve this problem and give our users insight in their most memorable photos. Looking at the positive user reviews and our enormous growth.
New apps for ReSnap
ReSnap assures us that they will be launching the new apps in a couple of weeks. After that, Bundle’s founders and its team will leave the company. ReSnap, until today, has raised around 400.000 euro from informals. Bundle, previously known as Ukky, banked 500.000 euro in two rounds. Half of that figure came from angel investor Hans Veldhuizen who was previously the founder of Albelli-Albumprinter. He sold his company to Cimpress (Vistaprint) in 2011.
