blogfoster, the Berlin-based startup for blog and influencer marketing, secured a seven-digit follow on investment by yabeo Capital and all previous investors, including VC Fund Technology and Axel Springer Plug and Play.
Founded in 2013, blogfoster gives advertisers access to a pool of thousands of bloggers and helps them place their products and brands within the sphere of relevant target groups. Advertisers are sorted by topic and relevant insights, leaving the bloggers to choose their preferred collaborators themselves. This process keeps the bloggers’ authenticity intact and makes them influencers, resulting in the significant perception and reputation of advertised brands. Advertisers can profit from the bond of trust between Bloggers and their readers. blogfoster handles the process from start to finish and reports relevant data after the end of the campaign to give both sides an objective overview of the milestones achieved.
After just over a year of being live, the blogfoster team managed to recruit thousands of bloggers and several hundred active advertisers as clients. “To us, this is a clear endorsement of our business model and now we’re focused more than ever on growing our team and business,” said Jan Homann, co-founder & CEO of blogfoster.
“blogfoster have doubled their revenues since the beginning of the year and are growing at a rate of 500 new bloggers per month, with a double-digit number of new advertisers joining monthly – we find that very impressive. The young and highly professional founding team as well as the scalable technology convinced us and we are happy to be a part of blogfoster. The team is ready and eager to accelerate this growth spurt with fresh capital to become the leading Influencer technology in Europe and beyond,” said Gerrit Seidel, CEO of yabeo Capital.
Plans to grow the Berlin team from 20 to 35 employees by the end of the year are already underway. The startup will move to a new office in Berlin-Mitte; to accommodate their growing team and new members.
“As investors who have been there from the inception of blogfoster, we’re excited to offer more capital in tandem with strong partners, which will be invested in product development as well as national and international growth in the coming months,” said Jörg Rheinboldt, CEO of Axel Springer Plug and Play.
“The blogfoster application V2 is the best possible basis for our future growth plans. With our new tracking technology, blogfoster Insights, we’re the only provider currently able to measure and analyze reach objectively for bloggers and advertisers. The next logical step is to incorporate other influencer channels into our network and broaden the scope of our campaigns,” said Simon Staib, co-founder and CPO. He continued: “Pioneering tech that combines all the influencer marketing channels has not conquered the market yet. Backed by our investors, our highly motivated team is focused on developing a product that closes this gap. We’ll announce the next big step on our path in this direction in Q4 2016.”
