📸 From Leftover Photos to $75M: The Unsplash Story That'll Blow Your Mind!

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Hey Deal Lift readers! Ready for a story that'll make you question everything you know about startup success? Buckle up! 🎢

Top investors are buying this “unlisted” stock

When the team that co-founded Zillow and grew it into a $16B real estate leader starts a new company, investors notice. That’s why top firms like SoftBank invested in Pacaso.

Disrupting the real estate industry once again, Pacaso’s streamlined platform offers co-ownership of premier properties – revamping a $1.3T market.

By handing keys to 2,000+ happy homeowners, Pacaso has already made $110m+ in gross profits.

Now, after 41% gross profit growth last year, they recently reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO. But the real opportunity is now, at the unlisted stage.

Until May 29, you can join Pacaso as an investor for just $2.80/share.

Invest before the window closes.

_{This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals. Under Regulation A+, a company has the ability to change its share price by up to 20%, without requalifying the offering with the SEC.}

🎯 The "Oops, I Just Created a Billion-Dollar Company" Moment

Picture this: It's 2013, and Mikael Cho is just another struggling entrepreneur with a psychology degree from the University of Wisconsin. After moving to Montreal, he struggled to find a job without speaking French. His solution? To start his own company. His startup "Crew" (a platform connecting businesses with freelancers) was barely making waves, and he needed some decent photos for his landing page.

So what does any cash-strapped founder do? He hires a photographer! 💸

But here's where it gets interesting - the photographer delivered way more than expected, leaving Mikael with a bunch of gorgeous, unused high-res images. Instead of letting them collect digital dust, he had a wild idea: "What if I just... gave them away?" 🤔

Plot twist: This "throwaway" decision was about to accidentally disrupt the entire stock photo industry! 🌪️

🏗️ The MVP That Broke the Internet (Literally!)

Mikael's "minimum viable product" was hilariously simple:

• Platform: A basic Tumblr blog (cost: $19 theme!) 💰

• Content: 10 high-resolution photos

• License: Creative Commons Zero (completely free!)

• Promise: "10 free photos every 10 days"

• Marketing budget: Basically zero! 🤷‍♂️

The Tumblr blog took all of a few hours to put together. Crew co-founder Mikael Cho bought the $19 theme on his credit card, uploaded the hi-res images to his dropbox account, added the public links to the blog and created a subscription form.

🚀 Launch Day: When Success Becomes a Problem

On launch day, Mikael posted his little project on Hacker News. What happened next is every entrepreneur's dream AND nightmare:

• 50,000+ visitors in ONE DAY! 📈

• The site crashed immediately (whoops!) 💥

• Dropbox servers couldn't handle the traffic 🔥

• Instant validation that he'd stumbled onto something HUGE! ✨

That's when he uploaded 10 free photos to a basic Tumblr blog – and accidentally crashed Dropbox's servers within hours.

Talk about a good problem to have! 😅

🌟 The Plot Twist That Changed Everything

Here's where the story gets really juicy! By 2017, something incredible happened - Unsplash had grown so massive that it overshadowed Mikael's original startup!

So what did he do? He sold Crew to Dribbble and went ALL-IN on Unsplash! 🎯

The numbers were getting insane:

• Photographers from around the world were submitting photos

• The platform evolved with search functionality, categories, and curated collections

• It's become a source of inspiration for everyone from award-winning writers like Deepak Chopra to industry-titans like Apple, and millions of creators worldwide.

💰 Show Me The Money!

The financial journey is a masterclass in startup scaling:

2018: $7.25M Series A funding (led by OST) 💸 2021: Getty Images acquisition for $75M 🤑 Impact: Over two billion image downloads across the globe

That's roughly $7.5M per original photo! 🤯

🎭 The David vs. Goliath Moment

Here's the kicker - Getty Images, the same company that dominated the stock photo industry for decades, ended up buying the free platform that was disrupting their entire business model!

Unsplash announced that it will continue to operate as a standalone brand under the ownership of Getty Images.

It's like McDonald's buying the trendy food truck that's stealing all their customers! 🍔➡️🚚

🏆 The Golden Lessons That'll Change Your Perspective

1. Sometimes "Free" is the Ultimate Business Model 💡 While everyone was charging for stock photos, Mikael gave them away and built a massive audience.

2. Solve Your Own Problem First 🛠️ He needed photos for his startup, so he created a solution that millions of others needed too.

3. Start Stupidly Simple 🧠 A $19 Tumblr theme beat million-dollar platforms because it focused on ONE thing really well.

4. Timing + Execution = Magic ⚡ The rise of content marketing created massive demand for high-quality, free images.

5. Community Beats Competition 🤝 Instead of fighting existing players, he created a community that made the competition irrelevant.

🎪 The Mind-Blowing Extras You Didn't Know

• The Tumblr Factor: Unsplash started as a Tumblr blog + Mailchimp newsletter. A year later, after we saw the site had grown almost tenfold, we decided it was worth it to build it custom so we could do more with it.

• The Accidental Empire: Mikael Cho never planned to build Unsplash. His original startup was failing, and he needed a creative marketing idea.

• The Billion-User Impact: What started as 10 photos now serves millions of creators worldwide, from indie bloggers to Fortune 500 companies!

🔥 The Ultimate Takeaway

Mikael's story proves that sometimes the best business ideas come from the most unexpected places. He wasn't trying to revolutionize the stock photo industry - he was just trying to solve a simple problem with leftover photos!

The real magic? He recognized opportunity when it knocked (or in this case, when it crashed his servers!) and had the courage to pivot his entire career toward it.

What's your "leftover photos" moment? That side project or random idea that could be bigger than your main hustle? Drop us a line - we'd love to hear about it! 💌

Keep lifting those deals! 🚀 - The Deal Lift Team

He’s already IPO’d once – this time’s different

Spencer Rascoff grew Zillow from seed to IPO. But everyday investors couldn’t join until then, missing early gains. So he did things differently with Pacaso. They’ve made $110M+ in gross profits disrupting a $1.3T market. And after reserving the Nasdaq ticker PCSO, you can join for $2.80/share until 5/29.

Invest today for $2.80/share.

_{This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals. Under Regulation A+, a company has the ability to change its share price by up to 20%, without requalifying the offering with the SEC.}