Hi, I'm Jan König 👋. I'm one of the founders of Jovo, 28 years old, and live in Berlin. < Go back to learn more.

"Who the hell needs a search engine for gifs?"

"Gifs are dead."

"This is just a toy."

"How are you gonna make money with stuff like this?"

"It's pronounced 'jif' "


These are reactions that probably came up dozens of times when the creators of Giphy started working on their search engine for gifs in February 2013.

Fast forward 3.5 years, Giphy closed a $55M Series C funding with daily numbers like this:
How did this happen?

In my opinion, Giphy is the perfect example for an idea that seemed so small and toylike first, that people never imagined how big if a thing it could become.

And it took amazing execution and creative products to come this long way. Giphy is probably the first platform that saw the opportunity in distributed content and fully focussed on bringing their gifs anywhere: They were the first provider to make gifs possible inside Facebook posts (with a clever workaround), bring fun to workplace communication, and have tons of experimental apps.

To me, it's one of the most impressive success stories that integrated "written off" or "niche" media into everyday pop culture. Way to go. 

-Jan

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