The first one is: At this moment, we are officially launching Lokata in Moscow, our Russian venture following the legacy of kaufDA’s innovation. Entering Russia as our third market may seem as a surprise – the decision however was made carefully, and it is simply based upon the vast market potential in the East: Russia, as the largest country in the world by geography and its 140 million inhabitants, takes the second “European” place after Germany in terms of internet connectivity (60 million users) and will take the first place by 2014 (80 million users). From 20 to 40 million Russians use mobile web; there are 17 million smartphone users in Russia.

Russia does not bear the same market characteristics as Europe, though, Yandex vs. Google reflects just one instance, which is why we have further decided to form a powerful alliance between the leading developer of Russian web companies – FastLane ventures and us -, bringing together our LBS power and the Russian execution experience.

We are excited to jumpstart our Russian venture alongside FastLane, which has been shaped by Pascal Clement and, among others, by Damian Doberstein and Oskar Hartmann, the founders of KupiVIP and two of my colleagues from older WHU times. We have a rockstar team in place there, run by Zhanna Shalimova and Marcel Baltes. Among our advisory board, we are lucky to have high profile supporters behind our mission including Regina von Flemming, the President of Axel Springer Russia, from whom i personally learned a lot already, and Alexey Filatov, CEO of BBCG, the Russian retailer federation

Secondly, we are also announcing today the creation of our Umbrella Brand for all our local business entities: The Bonial International Group, or B.I.G. in short …

Following the success of kaufDA in Germany, as well as Bonial in France, we like to combine our current ventures under the roof of The Bonial International Group. Through these three countries, our product is available to 300 million consumers. I am happy to lead this group as CEO as well, alongside Max Biller, our COO, and a strong team including Joachim M. Guentert (our communication superstar), Elena Lange (former Rocket / Glossybox) and not least Lucas Vogelsang (one of the Swiss DeinDeal founders).

Internationalizing our LBS model is not as straight forward as an ecommerce or a pure digital venture, as it bears the same characteristics as classifieds business models (like real estate, or automotive). In those markets, mostly strong local players have assumed market leadership (i.e. SeLoger in France, i.e. ImmoScout in Germany), with rarely any player having internationalized organically. We will proof that it can work successfully by focusing on big (or B.I.G. ) markets and executing quickly.

Just as a reminder: We have launched Bonial in France early December 2011, and are very happy about our progress: It is growing five times as fast as kaufDA in its first stages. We have aligned a superior team between Paris and Berlin, starting from our CEO Matthias Berahya-Lazarus, our head of sales Laurent Landel (former American Express) and Maryse De Wever (former TBWA), and our French rockstars in the marketing/content teams of course. Moreover, it is exciting to have a high profile Grandseigneur on board: Michel Bon runs our Supervisory Board, as the former CEO of France Telecom and Carrefour he combines the mobile and retail experience, our two biggest success drivers. I am sure, Russia will show the same progress soon.

Welcome Lokata, welcome Bonial International Group. It is such a good feeling to see the “Familia” growing!

Media Entrepreneurs ist vor allem durch seine einzigartige Bewerbungskampagne bekannt geworden, die Axel Springer in einem polarisierenden, selbstironischen Video dargestellt hat. Dieses zeigt ein Bewerbungsgespräch eines Startup Gründers beim Vorstand der ehrenwerten Aktiengesellschaft – dieser Clip hat mittlerweile mehr als 200.000 Views. So ähnlich lief auch unser Vorstandstermin damals ab :

Since kaufDA is a really unique business model, it goes without saying that we need to bring this concept to other attractive countries.

Such a growth ambition requires a strong team and an even more powerful driving force behind it. We got that now: We have managed to get Max Biller on our board, who has assumed the role as President International at our company.

Let me say a few words on this: I’ve known Max for almost one year now, he used to be one of our main contacts in forging our deal with Axel Springer. He has provided us with both the necessary trust and confidence to join the roof of Axel Springer as quite an early stage business. He has gained extensive experience in pushing businesses like Zanox beyond borders, and, mostly, shares our vision to build up our company connecting local retailers and consumers.

Moreover, this move shows that we are closely aligned with our new anchor shareholder – Max and we had agreed quite quickly to get him on board, and Springer let him join us fast – speed matters!

Max, we’re very looking forward to working with you!

The Financial Times has also published an article on this topic in today’s edition.

Admittedly, though, this wasn’t our first encounter with Springer: 12 months earlier, we tried to convince Springer to join our mission and become a partner, as potential synergies were so damn clear to us. Our talks ended unsuccessfully. Since then times have changed, by delivering a proof of concept kaufDA became relevant all of a sudden and was on Springer’s radar . This ultimately led to our joint deal announced in March 2011.

In this context, I’d like to share some thoughts on why we decided to join Axel Springer. Our options were triple-folded: Staying independent, joining one of the other media companies that showed interest in us, or becoming a part of Springer. We didn’t anticipate dealing with these questions that early, it was a result of our strong traction especially on kaufDA’s B2B client side.

When dealing with Springer, we’ve always been reminded of our time at Goldman Sachs where Tim Marbach, my cofounder and myself had the opportunity to work during our studies at WHU: A value- and performance-driven culture, a strong market position, and not least, a tremendous reputation. Like Goldman, Springer is not the largest media company, but probably the most profitable, innovative and determined one that shapes the industry’s future trends. Ultimately, there were four reasons that led us to pursue the deal:

1) Leadership through clear strategy: Springer is on its way to become the largest web company in Germany. Thus, kaufDA will have excellent fellow companies in Springer’s digital business unit, as shown in the chart above. Those include idealo (Germany’s biggest price comparison site), Zanox (Europe’s No. 1 affiliate network), aufeminin (Europe’s largest female advertising platform), as well as StepStone (Europe’s leading job platform). Being the market leader for digital retail advertising, kaufDA fits well in this portfolio. Moreover, Springer has shown a clear preference for platform-driven models in large, relevant markets in the past that all rely on digital revenue streams without any inventory risk – platforms that bring together supply and demand, often involving B2C driven reach strategies. This background turns Springer into the predestined anchor shareholder for our business.

2) Leverage: Springer does not only understand new media, they maintain a deep understanding of Germany’s old economy that includes most of kaufDA’s clients. Springer’s BILD has a strong track record in retail and advertising space, Springer’s ad sales exceed the ones of the second largest print company by far, as shown in the graph above (excerpt from an investor relations presentation). This will enable kaufDA to accelerate its growth on the B2B side.

3) Maximum Freedom: Springer tends to manage its web portfolio companies more like a private equity powerhouse as opposed to a corporate organization. Moreover, our founding team still holds 25.1% of the company, including all minority shareholder rights. This leaves a founding team like us substantial freedom to further develop the business at an accelerated pace, in a way that we decide where synergies provide benefits to our company.

4) Surprise . There is another reason which i will not disclose at this particular moment.

Hence, we are in a confident position to push our business to the next level backed by such a strong partner. Stay tuned, we will shortly announce the first results out of this new era!

Among web officials, information search is considered the ultimate discipline, since it is a tough challenge to meet user expectations, usability, and decent search results at the same time. A lot of coverage has recently been focused on semantic search and the likes. Qwiki, on the other hand, has developed sort of a universal knowledge engine, combining images, text, or videos in an orchestrated manner that provides users with a unique perspective on a specific keyword: If you search for a term, i.e. a specific city, it automatically reads the information while showing you adequate image material. For the first time, i believe, this reflects a search approach that has hit a sweet spot, it’s like a combination of Wikipedia, Flickr and Youtube.

Qwiki even features content, text and some stunning pictures, of my birthplace Freudenstadt, most notably demonstrating its historical relevance (didn’t know that F-D-R visited it once), as well as my hometown Baiersbronn, Germany’s culinary capital.

Admittedly, Qwiki shows some “Kinderkrankheiten” when transforming text to voice (i.e. Napelon “I” instead of “1st”). I believe, though, this will remain just a matter of time.

To see what it can do, just check out their startup video presentation at TechCrunch. In my mind, Qwiki addresses the needs of digital natives like me, taking search to the next level. I am curious to see how the team around Qwiki will continue to develop their product and what kind of business model they will build on top of it, apart from being a potential technology takeover target for Google & Co.

“Der Erfolg des Werbeprospekte-Portals lockt immer mehr Nachahmer. Gaiser sichert die Vormachtstellung von Kaufda im Markt, nicht zuletzt aufgrund reichweitenstarker Kooperationen wie etwa mit der Telekom. Wachstumsgaranten für 2011 sind Konzentration auf und Ausbau der Services für mobile Endgeräte sowie der Einstieg in den mobilen Couponmarkt.”

It is fair to say, our close partnership with Deutsche Telekom has boosted our business development, mostly through a number of terrific reach deals such as:

• a white-label integration of kaufDA content in T-Online.de, Germany’s most highly trafficked website
• a widget integration in Telefonbuch.de, Germany’s leading search engine for telephone numbers
• a deal with Scout-Group, Germany’s market leader in classifieds
• a close cooperation with former parts of T-Mobile, enhancing our app development
• …not least, the funding provided by T-Venture (which also has a strong record in companies such as Swoodoo, or Click&Buy)

All of these deals have been implemented within one single year of business development. Such a rapid implementation also demonstrates that it is possible to combine the strengths of a large (and former state-owned) corporation with an agile, fast-moving startup organization. I believe, there a not that many German blue chip companies capable of integrating such a close and rapid partnership approach.

Not least, Deutsche Telekom as Germany’s most trustworthy brand (according to W&V) has provided kaufDA with a decent credibility, laying a solid framework in the conservative environment our retail clients stem from. Hence, we are really proud to be a partner of Deutsche Telekom and would like to thank all personalities involved in kaufDA.

Das Video ist hier oder im kaufDA Youtube Channel zu finden:

Als ich Anfang dieser Woche wieder auf “Retail-Mission” von Berlin Tegel in das gelobte Schwabenland aufgebrochen bin, galt es den üblichen Security-Prozess zu durchlaufen. Wie immer packte ich mein MacBook bzw. iPad in die Container beim Röntgen-Schalter. Der Security-Wächter sah den kaufDA-Aufkleber auf meinem Laptop: “Darüber habe ich erst neulich in der Chip einen Bericht gelesen. Arbeiten Sie etwa da?”

Vorgestern habe ich im Zug eine Dame getroffen, die ganz begeistert von ihrem iPhone erzählte. Als sie erfuhr, dass ich in der Internet-Branche arbeite, schwärmte sie von dieser tollen iPhone-App, die ihr unterwegs immer beim Schmökern hilft. Ich glaube, sie meinte kaufDA .

Als schöner Abschluss folgt heute eine kleine Auszeichnung: Heute schreibt der Fachblog lokalesucheblog in einem kurzen Bericht über kaufDA als “everybody’s darling” im location based space.