Photobucket Raises $10.5 Million From Premier Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firm; Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures Joins Photobucket's Board of Directors

Business Wire, May 16, 2006

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Photobucket (www.photobucket.com), the world's leading visual content hosting and publishing service, today announced that the company has secured $10.5 Million in a second round of funding. Trinity Ventures led the Series B round as a new investor.

The financing will be used to further accelerate market share gains and revenue growth, while maintaining a disciplined and financially sound P&L. Photobucket was cash-flow positive last year, and is profitable.

Photobucket is a consumer visual media hosting and publishing service with over 16 million members and 10 million unique monthly visitors, according to Media Metrix. 2 million new members sign up each month. Members upload personal visual content including videos, images and graphic art and link it to over 50,000 social media, ecommerce, blogging and discussion Web sites like eBay, MySpace, Blogger, and Neopets. Photobucket serves over 50 billion image and video requests per month. Since the launch of its video services in April 2006, Photobucket members have uploaded nearly 1 million video clips at a rate of over 30,000 new videos per day.

"We are very excited about Photobucket because of their leadership position in this large market, the accelerating momentum they have, and the great team they have assembled," said Gus Tai, General Partner at Trinity Ventures. "Photobucket is in a leadership position and has continued to demonstrate acceleration in their organic growth. It is a testament to the unique value proposition and quality of service they have developed over time."

Trinity Ventures General Partner and industry veteran Gus Tai will join the Photobucket Board of Directors. Gus' decades of experience in the consumer services and software industries make him a superb fit with the Photobucket management team. At Trinity, Gus focuses on company formation and accelerated growth of leading-edge consumer service and technology firms. Gus led the initial institutional investment in a number of related companies including Blue Nile, SpeedEra Networks, PlayFirst, MSpot, Modulus Video, WetPaint and ScanR. He has also worked as a close partner and investor in other companies whose technologies touch end-users, such as Sygate and KIVA Software.

"What is exciting to us about Gus and Trinity Ventures is their energy, thought leadership, and the value they place on building lasting relationships," said Alex Welch, Chief Executive Officer, Photobucket. "Gus recognizes and truly appreciates the value and potential Photobucket has."

To sign up for a Photobucket account, visit www.photobucket.com.

About Photobucket

Photobucket provides a simple, fast, and reliable service that enables efficient sharing and publishing of visual digital content online. Images, graphic art, and videos can be directly linked from Photobucket to any site, including popular sites like eBay, Gaiaonline, Piczo, Blogger, LiveJournal, Friendster, and Myspace. Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch (CEO) and Darren Crystal (CTO). Two years later, Photobucket was named the fastest growing site of 2005 according to Nielsen/Netratings and now ranks as a Top 100 site by reach according to all of the major ranking services. Photobucket was profitable last year and has been funded primarily by earnings. As of April 2006, Photobucket had over 16 Million users growing by over 65,000 users per day. Photobucket serves over 50 Billion images per month. Photobucket is based in downtown Palo Alto, California, with technology operations and development based in Denver, Colorado.

About Trinity Ventures

Founded in 1986, Trinity Ventures is a value-added investor that provides capital, networks and resources to early-stage software, Internet services, communications and networked systems companies. With more than $1 billion under management, Trinity Ventures has invested in and worked closely with leading companies such as Blue Nile, Crescendo Communications, Extreme Networks, Forte Software, LoopNet, SpeedEra Networks, Starbucks and Sygate. Trinity Ventures has offices in Menlo Park. For more information visit www.trinityventures.com.