91% of markets believe there is still room for growth in showcasing diversity in their market materials. There’s been a seismic shift for brands to ensure that their values are reflective of the gender, racial, sexuality realities of today’s consumer population, which is now more diverse than ever before. The Luupe is a marketplace and professional community for brands to connect with and hire women and non-binary photographers. Founded by a former Shutterstock executive, the platform provides professional guidance to this segment of photographers that have traditionally been overlooked while handling the production and creative process for brands. Partners on the platform include Sweetgreen, Go Henry, Cha Cha Matcha, Dropbox, and Sierra Club. The Luupe is free for the photographers with brands paying for the services and licensing fees for the content that’s produced.
AlleyWatch caught up with The Luupe CEO and Founder Keren Sachs to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the profound economic impact that the platform creates for diverse photographers, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
The Luupe raised $3M in seed investment funding. The round was led by Wave, with participation from Jenny Lefcourt, General Partner at Freestyle. Prior participation included strategic angels such as Tracy Kim, Former CEO of Aaptiv & Chief of Staff at Shutterstock; Jody Vandergriff, CEO at Seeker, Founder & CEO at WebDAM (Acquired by Shutterstock); and Lee Torrens, an early employee at Canva.
Tell us about the product or service that The Luupe offers.
The Luupe is a one-stop production marketplace helping brands collaborate with a curated community of women photographers and diverse creators all over the world.
The Luupe’s mission is to help creators generate income. As a dual-sided marketplace, sophisticated brands have access to a burgeoning group of women and non-binary photographers for work. In turn, photographers create authentic visuals for brands that reflect their global audiences. In addition to the marketplace, The Luupe provides photographers with opportunities to network with each other, share technical tips, negotiation strategies, portfolio reviews, job opportunities, and use their blog to tell or share stories on women and visual culture.
What inspired the start of The Luupe?
Before creating The Luupe, I was the Director of Content Development at Shutterstock I’ve spent most of my career working with photographers and businesses to shape their visions and have held content roles at National Geographic Society and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Responding to what I saw as an absence in brands hiring women photographers, I created The Luupe, with the mission to get more women behind the lens and generate income for themselves. As brands increase the amount of content they release on various channels and prioritize capturing diverse perspectives, the need for diverse photographers increases as well.
How is The Luupe different?
The Luupe’s scaled and collaborative process allows multiple photographers around the world to join forces to drive the many angles of every brand’s story. Most importantly, we help brands reach more customers globally, locally, and with a more authentic lens. Our approach focuses on both sides of the marketplace in order to bring together and support the community, enabling these underrepresented creates to generate income.
The long-term vision for The Luupe is to become the one-stop-shop for creators. Right now, creatives are using multiple solutions for every aspect of their professional businesses and generating income, from hiring to licensing and everything in between. The Luupe aims to become the sole tool for these photographers, giving them a stop for their assignment work, enabling brands and photographers to connect, and fostering a community unlike any other that currently exists.
What market does The Luupe target and how big is it?
As a two-sided marketplace, the Luupe has two main targets: Brands and photographers.
The Luupe’s first target is the many brands struggling to create content that reflects the growing diversity of their customers. As culture becomes more progressive and inclusive, brands, who have historically, overwhelmingly hired white male photographers, are looking for more diverse options. This is where The Luupe and our community steps in, helping these brands source and create content that more accurately reflects their audience and customers.
The Luupe works with women and nonbinary photographers all over the world, with the goal to champion and amplify these underrepresented voices, and help brands and photographers seamlessly make great work together. This makes up a huge percentage of people (remember, half of the global population are women) that are often overlooked by major brands when it comes to employment opportunities.
The Luupe knows that unique perspectives are vital to telling the stories and distinct personalities of global brands. It empowers our authority, agility, and authenticity. It makes us who we are.
What’s your business model?
The Luupe team brings new photographers into their community through an open submission process, selecting photographers based on experience, vision, and geographical location. For photographers who are not accepted into The Luupe’s community, our team often provides feedback on how to improve their work.
The photographers selected are given profiles with information about their past work. When brands and organizations contact The Luupe to collaborate on a project, The Luupe recommends a photographer or team of photographers in multiple locations and often manages the creative and production process.
The Luupe is free for photographers, aiming to have absolutely no hurdles for creatives to use their service. For brands, they pay for the services/licensing of the content being produced.
The Luupe will focus on both sides of the marketplace; bringing together the community with support sources to generate income.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
We remain remote until we move back into the office full-time. Right now, our team is global!
What was the funding process like?
It was a challenge but once I met the right group of women, I was fully supported as a woman founder trying to raise money for my seed round.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The biggest challenge was definitely being taken seriously as a woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated world. Overcoming this seemed impossible at points and is likely a huge deterrent for women founders but throughout the process, I met with the support and empowerment of other women in the community that helped me forge my path through closing my seed.
The biggest challenge was definitely being taken seriously as a woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated world. Overcoming this seemed impossible at points and is likely a huge deterrent for women founders but throughout the process, I met with the support and empowerment of other women in the community that helped me forge my path through closing my seed.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Investors saw that The Luupe was not just another creator marketplace and believed in the long-term vision of our dual-talent, comprehensive production, and guaranteed payment for creators.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
With our new round of funding, The Luupe is majorly focusing on hiring and building out our dev and sales teams. They really want to hone in on the self-serve side of the marketplace.
Ultimately, they want to build the future of workflow tools to connect brands and creators.
One specific thing we are looking forward to is the upcoming “self serve” feature, which will allow them to better support SMBs and individuals, not just larger more established businesses. They’re also planning to launch our Managed Marketplace model, which will allow anyone to sign up and search for photographers, and use the workflow tools to search for them. Ultimately, The Luupe wants to build a community and provide them with every opportunity to succeed – and that includes connecting them with as many potential clients as possible.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh
injection of capital in the bank?
Don’t give up. It may sound stereotypical, but it’s very true!
Fundraising, especially as a woman founder, is no easy task. If I gave up when things got hard, and they did, then I would have never gotten the funding needed. Hearing no over and over again can be discouraging, being the only woman in the room can be discouraging, and believing an idea that others don’t seem to see the monetary value behind can be discouraging – but you can’t let it win. Keep going, keep working – you will find what works.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC
Balthazar.
