German startup Archives - Serious Startups

Berlin Entrepreneurs Trying To Curb Facebook Fatigue With Flowsee

A new Berlin based startup called Flowsee is hoping to take advantage of Facebook fatigue by offering users a social network with a local angle and curated multimedia. Flowsee is a mashup of Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

The Flowsee social network has multiple category pages like music, tech and photography. In each of the categories users can upload photos and videos that are relevant to that category or whatever other categories they like. Pictures, links and videos are then voted up or down in a way similar to both Digg and Reddit with the most “likes” getting to the top of the page.

While the site is stating out and focused on Berlin, the company feels that it’s readily scalable. Back in late October they told us that they had already surpassed 10,000 users per month.

Like some other social networking projects, while Flowsee has a definite infrastructure to it, they are letting early adopters use the social network the way that they want to. For instance, vendors at the Mauer Park Flea Market has started using the platform to post their handmade and vintage goods for sale. Co-founder Olivier Jarfas told Silicon Allee that it didn’t take long for the vendors to start adding photos and even videos to their pages.

We all know that Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, they past the billion users mark last year and continue to move forward despite the fact that their stock market price is a lot lower than they had hoped. Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann also reported earlier this week that Facebook may be perceived by teenagers as “for older people”.

As a result more and more social networks are popping up. Most of the newer social networks are finding verticals to launch in like food, academia and careers.

As for Flowsee, we got a chance to talk with the Berlin based team. Check out the interview below.

Dave McClure, The King Of Everywhere Else, Makes First German Investment: Versus IO

While here at nibletz we are the “voice of everywhere else” Dave McClure, Sith Lord at 500 Startups and founder of Geeks on A Plane, is the reigning king of “everywhere else”, to prove that his first investment in a German startup has just been revealed. McClure has invested $100,000 in comparison platform Versus IO.

We’ve been covering the German startup since earlier this year and even had the opportunity to interview their CEO Ramin Far, earlier this month.

Versus IO in it’s simplest form is a comparison engine that allows you to compare two different things side by side. With Versus IO you can compare gadgets, electronics, and even cities. They are quickly ramping up to having 640 different comparison verticals.

It’s not just a “hot or not” style comparison either, for instance in their cities comparisons they use over 100 different factors including: education, crime rates, climate, infrastructure, safety, economy, business, culture, people and a whole lot more. What makes the platform truly unique is the fact that they aren’t in the business of selling things so there’s no chance that the comparison’s get skewed over things like price, discount and offer.

“We’re extremely excited about the investment from Dave and the role he will play in helping to take VERSUS IO to the next level in terms of what we offers users and the direction of the business”, Far, said in a statement. “Dave’s experience of working with growing companies will be invaluable for us moving forwards. 2013 has the potential to be huge for us to be even more successful than 2012 has been.”

This $100,000 investment is the first for McClure in a German company and it appears that it’s separate from the 500startups fund.

Linkage:

Check out VersusIO here

Here’s Dave McClure’s blog

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Check out some of the 500startups graduates at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

Interview With Berlin Startup VERSUS IO, Compare Anything

Last month we brought you a story about Berlin comparison platform startup VERSUS IO. They recently added 240 cities to their comparison platform which takes comparing two things and brings it down to it’s simplest form.

The internet is great for comparison shopping. Every major online retailer like Amazon, Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse and everyone in between, offers some kind of side by side comparison of products. Just about every time I go to make a major electronics purchase, I comparison shop something online.

Sure you may want to compare the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S 3, or the Galaxy Nexus vs the iPad Mini. But what if you wanted to compare other things? What if you wanted to take a European vacation and wanted to weigh France vs Italy. Well Versus IO allows you to do that comparison too.

With their recent addition of 240 cities to compare it makes deciding your next vacation a breeze. The team at VERSUS IO is in the process of creating the go-to site for comparing anything and they are well on their way. In fact they plan on providing comparisons on 640 different verticals.

We got a chance to talk with VERSUS IO, founder and CEO Ramin Far who previously headed MTV Networks’ North European online departments. Check out our interview below.

Google Acquires German Company Nik Software For It’s SnapSeed Startup

While the Instagram staffers were taking their new offices at Facebook on Monday and Tuesday, Google announced that they have acquired German company Nik Software and with that, their photo sharing startup SnapSeed. Instagram officially moved it’s modest staff of under 20 into Facebook’s headquarters Monday where they will be able to integrate and innovate closely with the existing Facebook team.

Nik Software, which has been around since 1995, catapulted in recent days with their picture sharing app SnapSeed. Forbes recently called SnapSeed “Instagram and a lot more”. SnapSeed has more features and more ways to edit and play with photos in the mobile environment.

Nik Software has a few photo apps out there already but none as popular as SnapSeed. SnapSeed boasts 9 million users, which may seem like very little compared to the 100 million that Instagram says they have. However, SnapSeed’s 9 million users have paid $4.99 for the app, opposed to Instagram which is free.

Parmy Olson at Forbes Magazine suggests that SnapSeed may fit in better with Google+. Google+ has a huge community of semi pro and pro-mateur photographers who have taken a liking to Google+ and the fact that they allow you to save high resolution photos directly to the Google+ network.

Vic Gundotra, the Google executive who oversees Google+ said this about Nik Software “We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone…”

Nik Software’s US office is in San Diego. The terms of the Google deal were not disclosed. It’s unclear whether or not Nik Software employees will immediately move to Mountain View or if they’re staying on at all. It’s also unclear as to whether SnapSeed will remain a stand along product or if it will be integrated into Google’s Picassa product.

In regards to the acquisition, Nik Software said “We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.”

Linkage:

Check out snapseed here

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German Startup: Carpooling.com Plans For US Expansion, INTERVIEW

Ridesharing is big overseas. There are a few standout startups working on ridesharing in the United States, including Iron Yard Labs startup RidePost. Established German ride sharing startup Carpooling.com is preparing for a big expansion in the US.

Carpooling.com has grown from 41,000 riders in it’s first year to well over 4 million today. They currently operate in 40 countries with their app available in 7 languages. Carpooling.com allows the rider to select someone to share a ride with based on vehicle, comfort, location and cost. This feature set insures that every rider gets to where they want to go, and how they want to get there. If you need to go 70 miles down the countryside you may want to ride with someone with a comfortable. If you’re just trying to get 15 miles to work you may be ok in a minivan. With carpooling.com the choice is yours.

Carpooling.com sees huge growth potential in the United States market. In their research they found that there’s an average of 3.75 seats available per car (not sure about that .75 part but ok) and over 3 trillion miles traveled per year. Now that startups like couchsurfing.com and airbnb.com have made it normal to share space with complete strangers, hopefully ridesharing startups can do the same for cars.

In our interview below carpooling.com tells us about their ridesharing startup, building a startup in Munich Germany and how they went from mitfahrgelegenheit.de to carpooling.com. Check out the interview below.

German Startup: Honestly.de Says They’re The Easiest Way To Give Feedback INTERVIEW

Giving feedback should be easy. When you take into consideration that most businesses that want your feedback have already somehow earned your money, than you want the easiest most simplest way to get that feedback. Even when you get $10 off your next meal or a buy one get one free, many of those surveys at the bottom of receipts are never answered.

Once you’ve been on the phone with a customer service department for 30 minutes the last thing you want to do is take some kind of survey. That may seem easy enough to you, but it’s not.

That’s why German startup honestly.de has come up with what they call is, the “easiest way to leave feedback”. Honestly.de promises that within 30 seconds you’ll be able to leave feedback for any service organization, and reach the pertinent people. That’s a pretty lofty goal, with the two hardest parts being building scale and engagement.

We got a chance to talk to Honetsly.de about their new startup. Check out the interview below: