StartUs Success Story: YodelSocial

We’d like to get to know you a bit more. What did you do before getting on the startup road?

Niko: I studied Business Administration at the WU (University of Economy) and worked as an Online Marketer. Then I worked at Pioneers Festival for 2.5 years. It was a great experience and it got me involved with the startup community. Afterwards I gathered experience as a freelancer for a year and started to look for new opportunities in the startup world.

David:  I studied Project Management at FH BFI Vienna while doing semesters abroad in the US and Australia. Afterwards I worked as a Portfolio Manager in the area of online gambling business at bwin.party in Vienna and Ongame Network in Stockholm. As time passed by I started to get the feeling that the company I was working for is losing its startup-like atmosphere due to rapid growth. Just at the right moment my friend Wolfgang (current CTO of YodelSocial) approached me and we started brainstorming on the startup ideas. After having worked on a few promotional facebook apps we came up with the idea of YodelSocial.

How did you meet? What role did StartUs play in your co-founder story?

David: Niko and I briefly met at the Startup Life Event in Vienna. Later on I started searching for potential CMOs for YodelSocial on StartUs and while going through profiles I saw a familiar face. I contacted Niko right away and after meeting a few times Niko became our third co-founder and a CMO.

Niko: At that time I was searching for opportunities in the startup community and was thinking about founding one myself. After meeting with David I really got into idea of YodelSocial, that is why I eventually became a co-founder.

David: We also made other important contacts through the StartUs platform. For example, we contacted Michael Ionita and Thomas Meyer, co-founders of The Closer: Startup Sales Training, who have been a huge help in moving forward with our marketing and sales efforts.

Tell us more about your startup. What stage are you in currently?

David and Niko: YodelSocial helps engaging with customers more effectively online with proven loyalty and gamification mechanics. We are currently in the active beta phase and already have customers (mostly digital agencies) requesting early access. So, bootstrapping is a good monetizing strategy for us, which works already. We are launching a new version of our service in April and are planning to close the beta phase in June. There is still a lot to do and we are happy about that.

What are your plans for the future that you would like to share with the Startup Community?

David and Niko: As every healthy startup we want to acquire more customers by providing a valuable product that is constantly improving. This of course means that our team has to grow as well. We are planning to have 5 team members by the end of 2015 and we are glad there are services like StartUs that can help us find them 🙂

Niko: Last but not least, we want to offer the StartUs community a special deal on our product. Just hit me at niko@yodelsocial.com!

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