Catherine Levene and Christopher Vroom
Artspace
FOUNDER: Christopher E. Vroom and Catherine Levene
INVESTMENT: 2013 - 2014
ABOUT ARTSPACE
Artspace is an online marketplace for contemporary art that was founded by Christopher E. Vroom and Catherine Levene in late 2010. The online service began operating in 2011 with an inventory of art with a total estimated value of $7–8 million.
At the time of Artspace's launch, it was one of the first major efforts to commercialize the art marketplace, making art accessible to everyone. Before its launch, most art sales were made in person, often in galleries, and transactions were rarely completed online. Another obstacle Artspace had to overcome was that viewing art before purchasing it was a must at the time. Artspace challenged both of these common viewpoints in the art industry.
The company received two rounds of capital investments, beginning in 2012. A Series A funding round in early 2012 secured $2.5 million for the company, with investors including Accelerator Ventures and Metamorphic Ventures. In early 2013, the company secured a venture capital investment of $8.5 million from Canaan Partners.
By 2013 Artspace’s inventory had increased to more than $100 million in estimated value and it was acquired by Phaidon in 2014.
ABOUT THE FOUNDERS
Christopher E. Vroom – Chairman
An avid art collector and patron of the arts, Vroom is credited as the vision behind the business, who recognized the potential to create a platform offering quality fine art to a broad audience.
Vroom was responsible for attracting top-level galleries, museums, cultural institutions and major artists to sell in an online context for the first time. Within the first year of Artspace's existence, it received $1.2 million in investment as an early stage startup.
Catherine Levene – CEO
A firm believer that e-commerce art marketplaces could become the norm for people interested in buying art, Levene sustained that it could result in a similar market shift for buying art as that which took place with clothing in the late 1990s.
In 2011 Catherine Levene was named as one of the Top 10 Female CEOs To Watch by the Huffington Post.