EQT Growth’s Acquisition of GotPhoto: Capturing a Moment in Time
This week, we announced EQT Growth’s first majority deal, you can read the full press release. Learn more about the company and why we are excited to join the GotPhoto team on the next phase of their growth journey in this piece from EQT Growth’s Dominik Stein and Pablo Medina.
“Pictures that capture a moment in time play an important role in our lives. They are a memory of our past and they remind us of stories, places, people, and feelings. I am a proud father of three amazing children who are all growing up way too quickly and, like millions of other German parents, my wife and I can never pass up on the opportunity to add a new photo of them to our collection. Whether it’s their first day of school headshot or their sports team annual photo, these are special moments in time that we love to capture and share with family and friends close to us.”
“The tradition of people photography goes back a century. While I’m not nearly that old, I can still vividly remember the excitement of my own school photo days in Mexico and the countless shoots I had in high school and college during my time in the US — ranging from our yearly soccer team headshots to our Greek life composite shoots to our senior & graduation photos and more. Today, I am able to look back at these photos and reminisce on the memories I’ve built with friends, teammates, and colleagues throughout my life. GotPhoto’s underlying market taps into this exact feeling by allowing photographers and end-consumers to capture unique moments in time in an efficient, high-quality, and user-friendly manner.”
Introducing GotPhoto
We are not the only ones who look at photos as more than just ink on paper. That’s why we’re sure you will agree with us when we say we see huge potential in a platform that allows photographers to spend less time behind their desks and more time behind the lens.
GotPhoto does exactly this, effectively streamlining photographers’ daily work through its digital-native, software solution that digitalizes key parts of photographers’ workflow. The company also enables direct access for end-customers (parents, relatives, etc.) to photos through its proprietary platform, which facilitates the ordering, printing, payment, and delivery of these photos through a range of physical and digital products in a fast and user-friendly manner.
Founded in 2012 in Berlin, today GotPhoto is a leading vertical platform in the people photography market, with a strong focus on school, nursery, and sports volume photography. It operates in a fast-growing underlying market, which is expected to grow at ~25% per annum through 2027 as customers increasingly recognize the benefits of digital-native workflow management solutions like GotPhoto’s. This stems from the fact that this is a largely offline market with a high degree of fragmentation, in which people still transact offline (via manual pen & paper orders and cash collections) and photographers often use a number of non-specialized, stitched solutions to manage their workflows, leading to high inefficiencies and significant missed revenue potential for their small-and-medium businesses.
At EQT Growth, we are huge fans of specialized vertical software solutions and “prosumer” tech tools that unlock significant productivity improvements and deliver tangible ROI to both customers and end-users alike. GotPhoto fits that mold perfectly, which has allowed it to position itself as a leading solution for volume photographers across the US, DACH, and the UK.
It goes without saying that all of this would not have been possible without the vision, execution, and entrepreneurial spirit of CEO Benedikt and COO Julius who, together with GotPhoto’s co-founders and the rest of the talented management team, have managed to build this into a global platform while being largely bootstrapped. This journey hasn’t always been straightforward but it’s in line with EQT Growth’s ambition to back amazing founders and teams with ambitious visions for their companies, helping them to accelerate their growth journeys.
Thus, it is with immense joy and excitement that we announced that EQT Growth has acquired a majority stake in GotPhoto. We cannot wait to partner with Benedikt, Julius, and the rest of the GotPhoto team as they continue to drive the digitalization and innovation of this large and fragmented market, helping photographers “earn more, save time, and stress less”, while allowing people all over the world to continue capturing special moments in time.
We may not be photographers, but we can picture this being the start of a great partnership together! 🙂
If you are looking to join us in this exciting journey, GotPhoto is hiring! Find out more here.
And follow EQT Growth on LinkedIn and Twitter.
