Talenthouse flotation finally reveals a $40M exit for EyeEm, Europe’s almost-Instagram

Talenthouse AG has made a name for itself as an aggregation of content creators, which is then commissioned by brands for their own social media channels. It seems that brands can't come up with the same kind of authenticity, so they farm it out. Talenthouse is now listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange in response to the demand for content creation and ability to tap into the creator economy.

In June last year New Value AG acquired EyeEm, a long-time social photos startup. The EyeEm founders insisted that it was a place for high-end content creators and photographers to sell their wares when it launched in 2011.

EyeEm had raised a total of $24 million in funding by the time it was acquired. The price of the deal was not released at the time.

The public markets flotation of Talenthouse has some interesting data.

The initial shares will trade around one Swiss Franc, and we have 400 million shares outstanding. The market cap tomorrow will be around 400 million Swiss Francs. We paid 37 million shares for Eyeem. The current share price is $37.3 million. Their exit was about 40 million dollars, since they also got cash.

Talenthouse has 14 million members across brands including EyeEm, Ello, Zooppa and Jovoto. Members of these brands produce content that can be used by other companies.

According to UNESCO, the creator economy employs 30 million people. In a commission for the UN, Talenthouse took in 16,700 submissions from 142 countries.

The CEO of Talenthouse said that they have acquired and developed brilliant companies within their portfolio so that their creatives have the tools to be part of an active community.

The SIX market floatation is a place where we learn how to behave as a public company. We are going to go for a listing on the NASDAQ because Tanenhaus is about the creative economy. In the German-speaking world, investors don't understand what the creative economy is. They don't know anything about Tik Tok.

Eyeem was started by five people in 2011. Eyeem retained part of the income when photographers offered their pictures for sale via the portal. The four founding fathers held 1.7 percent of their company.

They have since moved on to work on the app Aware, an analysis service for health data, and also become Angel investors, taking early stakes in the Gorillas delivery service.