Evan Nisselson has been investing since 2012. Prior to investing, he built four businesses powered by visual technologies as a serial entrepreneur for 18 years from Silicon Valley, New York to Europe. He was a professional photographer and digital media expert in the early 1990s. He started making pictures with his Nikon FM at 13 years old.
He thrives on helping people build teams and businesses that leverage technology to entertain, increase efficiency, and solve problems. Evan's international expertise ranges from assisting technology startups in raising capital, business development, marketing, content development, recruiting and product development.
In January 2007, he was named to American Photo magazine’s “New Power List.”
Evan was the Founder, CEO and Chairman of venture-backed Digital Railroad which launched in 2004 with the teamwork of incredible people. Digital Railroad provided professional photographers, agencies and image buyers with a web services platform and marketplace. We had about 3,000 photographers and 80 photo agencies in 80 countries delivering ~10-20K 50mb images a day pre-cloud computing. There were also about 30,000 photo buyers from top publications. As of Nov. 2008, total revenue for that year was estimated to be ~$3M with about half of that being recurring revenue. The company was closed in Nov. 2008.
In May 2003, he wrote an article that said camera phones would replace point-and-shoot cameras.
At Telecom Italia in 2003, he helped create the Virgilio.it consumer photo channel. At Excite@Home in 1996, he conceived and collaborated with a great team to create the first broadband consumer photography portal called Making Pictures, with Intel as a $3M joint venture partner. In 1996, he joined @Home Network which had an IPO in 1997, as one of the 1st four Photo Editors working 100% on the Internet.
Evan founded LDV Capital in 2012 with the unique thesis of investing in people building businesses powered by visual technologies and AI. This thesis was considered cute, niche and science fiction in 2012. Over a decade later, it is validated and will continue to be extremely valuable for many more decades.
When he started, only a few venture capital funds had platforms that delivered both valuable public and private events, proprietary research and content marketing strategies to add value. As a frequent speaker, moderator, and master of ceremonies at technology conferences such as The Next Web, IDCEE, Pirate Summit, MSFT BizSpark Euro Summit, TechCrunch, LeWeb and others around the world, Evan knew that a platform delivering valuable network effects is key to success. We have focused on empowering our growing visual tech ecosystem and creating value for our portfolio companies ever since.
Check out Evan’s select articles on our LDV blog:
WOW! Ten years is a long time!
We could not have accomplished this exciting milestone without our inspiring portfolio founders, experts, community members, co-investors and LDV LPs.
Thank you!
In the mid-’90s, Evan was a part of @Home Network. It was the first company to provide high-speed cable Internet services in the US. In 1996, Evan joined the company as a Photo Editor. At that time, there were only four photo editors paid to edit images for publishing on the Internet.
After months of remarkable growth and continuous innovation, Synthesia reached a staggering valuation of $1 billion.
At LDV Capital, we are honored to have played a very small part in their incredible journey which continues to evolve every day. In April 2019, we led their Seed financing round when they were pre-product and pre-revenue.
After 7 years of success, Mapillary joins Facebook to continue their vision to improve maps everywhere and for everyone.
We were honored to be Mapillary’s very first investor. Evan shares Mapillary’s successes at navigating the roller coaster that is early-stage business building and a couple of his lessons learned from their 7+ years of regular talks.