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. Revenue has so far topped $100 million in 2021. There is light advertising on the app, but Picsart does not collect data or offer targeted ads. Each month more than 150 million customers-mostly under the age of 35-use it to make more than 1 billion edits on photos and videos bound for social media, commerce sites and digital ads.īuilt on a freemium business model, Picsart offers basic tools for free and a more powerful version for $4.66 a month.

Originally written in English, Avoyan’s Armenian-born app is now available in 28 languages. The design and editing app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times across 180 countries.

Ten years later, Avoyan’s act of parental encouragement has exploded into San Francisco-based Picsart, one of the world’s most popular apps. “I wanted to give her a positive environment and give her resources to empower her creative talent.” “It reminded me of my situation when I gave up art for another career because I didn't get the right support.” So Avoyan built a mobile app offering a few tech tools to help his daughter improve her pictures. She was about to give up,” says Avoyan, 56. She had posted a drawing on social media and received harsh comments. One day in 2011 his 11-year-old daughter, Zara, came to him despondent. He remained an art lover and pushed his children to pursue it. He became wealthy and one the leaders in Armenia's burgeoning tech scene. Over the next 30 years Avoyan built and sold three software start-ups.

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