Mobile Berlin — Update 2016
On the verge of 2015 I published a post about mobile companies form Berlin on Medium. Quite a lot of things have happened in the ecosystem…
Written by Nicolas Wittenborn · First published on Point Nine Land on Medium, January 2016
On the verge of 2015 I published a post about mobile companies form Berlin on Medium. Quite a lot of things have happened in the ecosystem since then. It’s time for an update!
Let’s start with a brief recap of what happened to some of the startups I included last year:
Lovoo grew from 20m to 40m users.
EyeEm raised $18M.
Wunderlist was acquired by Microsoft for +$100m.
Clue raised a $7m Series A from USV and Mosaic.
Kitchen Stories* raised $1.8M and crossed 5M downloads.
Number26 raised a $10m+ Series A.
Remerge* raised a $3M series A and opened a US office.
Not too shabby for some 12 months!
*Part of the P9Family.
Now let’s look at the startups that have caught my eye this past year:
Mobile video mashup startup Dubsmash raised a $5.5M Series A and crossed a super impressive 75M downloads in less than a year.
Android | iOS
Messaging service GoButler raised $8M led by General Catalyst very quickly after launch.
iOS
Although launched in 2014, the fitness contender 8fit apparently has seen some very nice growth in 2015 and picked up $2.5m along the way.
Android | iOS
The brain-training app Memorado switched focus from desktop to mobile and raised $3m+ in new capital to make it happen.
Android | iOS
Book summary app Blinkist attracted $4m+ from Greycroft and Eventures.
Android | iOS
With $1m+ in Seed funding from US investors, Berlin/NYC based Hyper launched (one of) the nicest video aggregators out there.
iPad
Ex-Number26 employees founded the sweet looking P2P payment company Cookies, raised a Seed round and are currently looking for beta testers.
Beta Signup
Honorary mention for doing good: ShareTheMeal has helped to provide over 4m meals to people in need. Please check it out and consider giving!
Android | iOS
I am happy to see more and more mobile things happening in Berlin. Interestingly enough though, at least half of the above companies raised money from US-based investors. This shows the increasing interest of international investors in the Berlin scene— but might also mean that German based investors are too slow. ;-)
Curious to see where these startups will go and what else 2016 will bring us. If I forgot an interesting company or you want to chat on mobile in general, please feel free to ping me!