Lebanese-born Ramzi Rizk is a prime example of how hard work, dedication and passion can all lead to success. Ramzi moved to Hamburg, Germany to work on his M.Sc. in Software Architecture and later moved to Berlin to work on his Phd on Privacy in Social Media.
One night, while Florian Meissner and Lorenz Aschoff were hanging out at Ramzi’s place, Florian shared an idea he had from a revelation he got when his camera was stolen in New York in 2009 and he had used a friend’s iPhone to take pictures. Florian was impressed by the growing scene of mobile photographers and got the idea of a photo sharing app that does more than your average app.
Together in February 2011, the friends, Ramzi, Florian, Lorenz and Gen Sadakane started building a platform that enables mobile photographers to connect and do more than simply share images – they founded EyeEm. Prior to launching the app, the friends organized a few photographer exhibitions and published a book about it.
Ramzi was one of the speakers at BDL Accelerate 2014 discussing the journey EyeEm took from an idea discussed in a living room, to having over 13 million users in over 130 countries today while constantly adding new features empowering the community. Since Ramzi was with us last year, EyeEm bought Sight.io , an aesthetic algorithm that judges photos based on composition, color saturation and perspective, for an undisclosed amount, and raised $18 million in new venture funding led by Valar Ventures and existing investors Earlybird Ventures, Passion Capital, Wellington Partners, Atlantic Labs, and Open Ocean Capital.
The team behind EyeEm shows no signs of slowing down and is working long and hard hours to enhance users’ experience on the app truly reflecting that success is derived from a lot of hard work and dedication.
