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January 09, 2008
German Genealogy Site On A Roll - New VC and New Capital
Hamburg-based OSN GmbH, the company behind Verwandt.de and several other language specific family-tree building sites, has raised a new round of finance led by Hasso Plattner Ventures. Early investor Neuhaus is also on board for the round. No disclosure on size, except that it is a "multi-million euro" expansion round.
Over 1.4 million families have started their family trees since the launch of the verwandt.de platform, the firm said in a statement, adding that it has a total of over 16 million profiles.
Its Verwandt.de was the first launched (its name means relations in German) and has been growing at quick rate, according to an article in Techcrunch.
We checked in a while ago with the founders to learn a bit more about growing an international web service like this. Sven Schmidt, one of the founders, replied.
Did you hire locally for international development?
We hired local, native-speakers as country managers for each country we entered so far. We are true believers in going truly local. It is not only about translating the site, it is about making users feel at home.
We have an own blog, an own forum, own customer service etc. for each country. And yes, we do have a local brand in each country (a unique URL).
Did you hire some word of mouth PR types or contract a SEO?
Lots of people ask us that. And they are always amazed when I tell them: We do everything in-house. PR, logo design, SEO etc.: It's all done by our employees...We think of them as core competences. Especially PR & SEO are very important to start-ups these days.
It is also a question of cost-efficiency. We are a tight start-up, we have seen the hard times from 2001 to 2003. So it is also about keeping costs under control.
Last, but not least it makes for a great culture. We have built a great, great team over the last two years (The same team is behind dialo.de and Dealjaeger.de).
Posted on January 9, 2008 01:30 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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