Top new businesses of 2014: miPic

Founder: Carl Thomas
Launched: January 2014
Website: www.mipic.co

Drawing on the power of the sharing economy, London-based miPic successfully merges social media with art through its app which allows you to make money from your smartphone image library by selling your photos to a global audience – “turning likes into pounds”.

Since its launch at the start of the year, the miPic app has been downloaded in over 71 countries and has over 1,000 “mobile artists” from around the world. It also counts Sir Richard Branson as a fan after beating 450 companies to win the Innovation Award at the 2014 Pitch2Ritch competition judged by Branson and leading entrepreneurs such as Holly Tucker of notonthehighstreet.com. After taking home the prize, the start-up was awarded a package of £5,000 investment and enrolment to London tech accelerator The Accelerator Academy.

With the mobile industry booming, 2015 will see further expansion of the app with a £250,000 crowdfunding round currently underway.

Founder Carl Thomas created the platform on the basis that millions of us carry images that have the potential to be hung at a gallery, sold at a retailer or sent as a gift but don’t have the ability to monetise these images. The app works to resolve this by letting you upload your images from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the like straight to its gallery for global sale.