The viral photo-sharing app BeReal has accomplished something incredible, quickly racking up 15 million users in a super saturated social market. It’s so popular that Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat have all released new features that capitalize on what makes BeReal shine: its front-and-back camera set-up and its anti-addictive, once-per-day posting gimmick.
But BeReal is only two years old, operating off of its $30 million Series A round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. Unlike the social apps with billions of users that are trying to copy it, BeReal has not yet figured out how to monetize yet. According to a report from the Financial Times, the app is looking toward paid features or subscriptions for income, as opposed to inundating users with ads (see: Instagram).
BeReal’s founders, Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau, are notoriously tight-lipped about the app — they have not yet given an on-the-record interview with press. TechCrunch reached out to the company to confirm this report, but did not get a response before publication.
Now is as good a time as any for BeReal to figure out how to sustain itself, venture capital aside. While consumers may roll their eyes at particularly blatant BeReal copycats, these major social companies simply have more resources at their disposal to build a better product. BeReal is still relatively glitchy, taking away from the fun of its main conceit: once per day, at a random time, every user is notified that it’s “time to BeReal” and post a photo of whatever they’re doing. But when millions of users flock to the app at the same exact time, BeReal is prone to crashes.