Ramzi Rizk Co-Founder of EyeEm Photo App
In the midst of the Arabnet Beirut conference last week, the Berlin-based photo-sharing app EyeEm announced that it had signed a deal with Getty Images that would allow for its members to sell their work. For Lebanese co-founder Ramzi Rizk, who traveled to Beirut to speak at the conference and judge a startup competition on the sidelines, this meant a major milestone for his three-year old company that has already raise $6 million in funding, which will now finally be able to turn a profit. It also meant the chance to get to know the startup scene and see how he could help his home country, which he’d left at age 17 to pursue his IT studies in Germany. “This was my first trip back in the region in years. The main reason I said yes was to get introduced to the ecosystem. I met street photographers who reached out to me,” said Mr. Rizk. “I wanted to see if there was a scene, if there was an entrepreneurial bug. There’s a really blossoming scene. Being one of early ones in Berlin, I see a lot of similarities.” He said, “Five years ago, Berlin was also brand new on the scene, trying to make a name for itself, still trying to find the first companies that have the potential to, and eventually do, go global. A lot of companies were just taking established models and copying them. Lots of people didn’t get entrepreneurship, and were worried about what it meant to throw caution to the wind and pursue a vague vision with no job security and no clear plan.” Today EyeEm is a hub for a fast-growing global community of more than 10 million professional and amateur photographers – now growing by around a million a month, who share their work on the site and organize workshops, photo walks and exhibits. A “like” button, similar to that of Facebook, gives photographers more exposure. The company, which became incorporated in 2011, hosted the first mobile photography exhibition to test the waters after one of their co-founders Florian Meissner had his equipment stolen while in New York in 2009. “Our story is we ourselves are photographers, so we get the pains photographers go through. Some people think it’s easy to snap pictures. We know how to deal with photographers,” Mr. Rizk said. “We want a community where photographers can get recognition they deserve. And amateurs get better.” Under the new Getty deal, photographers will be getting 50% of the commission from their pictures sold on the site – a better cut than most stock photography services. “One thing we’re excited about is when we can pay photographers. We have VC money, used to cover expenses.” “We’re very serious about copyright ownership. The moment Getty deal kicks in, instead of having ads and selling data, we’re going to pay members,” said Mr. Rizk. The company’s next step in the coming months will be selling using its own platform. Now that he has gotten acquainted with the entrepreneur community in Lebanon, Mr. Rizk hopes to help them find funding and learn from his experiences five years ago – though he’s already impressed with what he has seen people do with little resources. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” he said. “I don’t see myself moving here. It’s not stable enough. But I respect what people are doing here.”
