Private social platform Yope has raised $12.3 million in a funding round led by Northzone. The company plans to use the capital to develop new features, expand its 35-person team and establish an office in the United States.
Inovo, Redseed and Geek Ventures also participated in the round, bringing Yope’s total funding to $20 million. The app has nearly 15 million registered users and focuses on small, private groups of friends and family.
Private Groups Replace Public Feeds
Yope allows users to privately share photos, videos, stickers and messages without public content, advertising or an algorithmically ranked feed. Accounts are private by default, while photos can also appear on friends’ lock screens and home-screen widgets.
Users create profiles by arranging photos in collage-style layouts called walls. Planned customisation options include colours, wallpapers, interests, favourite music and mini-games.
The company refers to its private groups as micro-communities. Co-founder and Chief Executive Bahram Ismailau said the model is intended for younger users who want to express themselves online without posting publicly or building an audience.
Yope said research involving more than 100,000 interviews found that about 30% of young users maintained private photo-dump or secondary accounts. Others primarily used messaging services rather than posting on public social networks.
AI Will Support Games and Offline Meetings
Yope describes itself as AI-native, but it does not plan to use AI primarily for generating posts. The company instead wants the technology to support interactions between people who already know each other.
An AI-powered mini-game feature is expected to launch within about a month. Yope is also considering tools that could help groups arrange offline activities, such as finding restaurants, purchasing event tickets or choosing a place to watch a football match.
The app already uses AI to generate recaps of moments shared between friends. It also offers in-app messaging, photo stickers and onboarding tools that help users find contacts and start private conversations.
Users Share Millions of Items Each Week
Yope users collectively share between 10 million and 20 million photos, videos and stickers each week. The company says more than half of its users open the app on at least five days each week, while about 20% of active users have invited an older family member.
Northzone partner Pär-Jörgen Pärson said Yope gives users more control over their social experience than large public platforms. The investor has previously backed consumer technology companies including Spotify and Klarna.
Yope is available as a free download through the Apple App Store and Google Play. The company plans to generate revenue through optional premium subscriptions rather than advertising.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
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