A study by the International Workplace group said that every week, 70% of employees are working at least one day a week somewhere other than the office. And with the pandemic where mostly everyone is work from home until further notice, working has become more flexible and dispersed, collaboration on projects becomes increasingly tricky. The timely delivery of a project on budget and having reached the end goal is threatened by poor communication.
Online chat services: A good solution?
Various online chat services and collaboration tools including Slack, Skype, Zendesk, Facebook Workplace and more have come to our rescue. Chat allows your organisation to work closer together and more effectively with other teams. Chat is intended for any communication, live Chat, sharing of files and voice and video calls. It creates a real-time in-person feel between team members and inspires collaborative conversations. However, there are many common challenges which come with chats like onboarding, data leaks, security etc. To overcome these issues, Amsterdam-based Open Social is trying to offer a community-based software platform for communication and collaboration.
Investment for Facebook Workplace competitor
And now recently the tech startup has raised €1.25 million investment from Amsterdam’s iconic VC, Peak Capital and Nimbus Ventures. Basically, Open Social is a B2B SaaS platform for building online communities. With the seed investment round, Open Social will further expand their team with top talent, develop exciting new technologies for their clients, and bring their innovative open-source online community software to organisations around the world.
How does it work?
Open Social provides an innovative online community platform for organisations that want to bring their members together online, whether it is to organise global volunteering efforts, share and generate new knowledge, drive crowd-innovation or collaborate using a digital co-working space.
Since its inception, Open Social has built award-winning online community platforms for some of the largest international organisations, including the United Nations and Greenpeace.
Impressed by commercial, open-source and technical capabilities
With the secured €1.25 million funding from Peak Capital and Nimbus Ventures, Open Social will further scale their services as an open-source SaaS-business to become a dominant player in the industry. “In 2020, we have seen a technological evolution that would normally take two years, happen in the span of just two months,” says Taco Potze, Founder and CEO at Open Social, “With increased decentralisation of organisations comes concerns over privacy and data ownership. In this new area, our vision for an open web that inspires trusted connections and collaboration is more relevant than ever.”
Peak Capital and Open Social built a strong relationship starting at a TNW Conference: “Open Social has shown strong product-market-fit with its external community solution for NGOs,” says Johan van Mil, Managing Partner at Peak Capital.
“With their open-source technology and extension strategy, they are able to tailor the platform to specific requirements of clients among different industries. We have been impressed by the commercial and technical capabilities of the team.”
Recruiting top talent to drive product innovation and enter new markets
Auke van den Hout, Managing partner at Nimbus Ventures emphasised: “The capability to service an international client base in Europe and the USA confirms the potential of Open Social.” With the investment, and the added-value of the new partnerships, Open Social will grow its core SaaS business and recruit top talent for its development team and senior positions such as a Head of Sales. This will allow Open Social to further develop their product offering, enter new markets in Europe and the USA, take customer success management to the next level and most importantly: drive its innovation roadmap.
Open Social is eager to benefit from the renowned insights and expertise of Peak Capital and Nimbus Ventures. Their guidance will ensure that Open Social grows and scales-up in a successful and sustainable manner. As Taco Potze says: “We feel very lucky to have found investors who share the same passion to deliver great products to clients, understand the drive, and ambition to discover new markets. The experience of these partners and their teams is of great value in our mission to become the world’s leading community-building platform.”
Main image credits: Open Social
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