How hot is WedPics? In these days where startups most of the time can’t land capital, the Raleigh crew based at The HUB raised an oversubscribed round.

Told to move out of the house where the company started, the Raleigh-based startup found a home at Raleigh’s HUB on Hillsborough Street, kept the foot on the development gas, is hiring and now has $1.1 million in new capital as happy couples and friends download its app in the thousands to share weddings across the Net.

But the money, the so-far success and a lot of international publicity from The New York Times as well as other publications hasn’t gone to the heads of the team.

Excited, yes.

However, it’s back to work – without a honeymoon even after the fund-raising, which was capped at $1.1 million after the initial target of $1 was quickly reached.

Says CEO Justin Miller: “Pretty wild.”

Launched in August 2012, WedPics is cashing in on the social media wave with a free downloadable app that encourages friends and family at weddings to share photos, creating an album.

WedPics already has more than 100,000 users.

More than 100,000 photos are being uploaded weekly.

That’s one ever six seconds.

An average weekend includes 700 weddings.

And to help handle the technology load, WedPics negotiated a partnership with Lenovo for some cutting-edge gear.

The Skinny caught up with an excited Miller to talk about the WedPics funding and the phenom it is becoming. 

  • You must be really excited?

Excited is probably an understatement! We’ve got some huge ideas in the pipeline for WedPics (in addition to scaling the app as it is currently), and these ideas require substantial capital behind them. Closing this round is now going to set these ideas into motion, and we are really excited about that!

  • Does this funding in your eyes give you a lot of cred to you as a business concept?

This funding is proof that social apps can spawn and scale in this area! To date, people haven’t thought of this region as a birthplace for social apps, but closing this round is definitely going to turn the tables and hopefully bring more interest to this area, as well as more initiative to others looking to break into the social space locally.

 

  • Are the investors individuals/angels?

The round is made up of a variety of individual angels as well as angel groups.

 

  • How much had you been seeking?

We had been seeking $1M, but wound up with an oversubscribed round that we had to cap @$1.1M. Pretty wild how we went from searching high and low for funding to actually having to turn investors away once we reached our cap.

  • How long do you see this funding lasting?

This funding is allocated through the remainder of 2013, on a tightly watched budget.

  • Are you at break-even or profitable at this point? Or are revenues growing and on track to get you in the black relatively soon?

We’re currently not monetizing our platform, focusing solely on user acquisition.

While we have several monetization strategies that we are going to be implementing and A/B testing during 2013, our core focus this year is user growth.

 

  • How many employees?

There are currently 11 of us, but we are looking to hire 1, possibly 2 more.

  • How will you spend the funds?

Funds will be allocated between running the business (salaries, legal, etc) and marketing – with marketing being a major focus (hand in hand with user acquisition).

  • Will you hire more people? If so, which areas?

We’re currently hiring an additional web developer, and might bring one more iOS developer on board as well.

  • What is your partnership with Lenovo?

Lenovo has provided us with some amazing hardware on which our developers code daily. Their new machines are top notch, and it’s really great to see a company of that size supporting startups like WedPics!

  • Are you now looking for other space or will you stay at The HUB?

We love the HUB 🙂