French social video startup with Dutch founders wins TNW Boost competition [Update]

It is an easy mistake to make: pronounce Qanda as ‘Q and A’. Co-founder Martin Verpaalen rather sticks to ‘Qanda’. But that name is not an accident, as the Dutchman came up with the ultimate, social, shareable Q-and-A video-app. We went by at their booth at The Next Web to drop some Q’s and get some A’s. Update: Qanda won the Boost competition on The Next Web 2016, being the most promising startup of the Conference.

One question at a time

Qanda is a social video application with which users can ask questions, one at a time. The only wat to answer that question, is by recording it on video with your phone. “I got the idea when I was asked to tell schoolkids about my job”, Martin Verpaalen says. “Mine was not very good, but other video’s were really interesting. A video makes an anwer more much more honest and personal.”

Functions and features

The product that followed is a very slick, iOS only (Android will follow soon) application. Users get notified of new questions, and can record an answer with the push of a button. The resulting video features the original question in the thumbnail. Once it is recorded, followers of that user will be notified. The video’s are easy to share or to embed on a webpage. It’s fast, looks fun and is suprisingly feature-rich for an early version. You can change filters on the video and even write down your answer before recording, like a built in teleprompter.

Interaction on social media

According to Verpaalen, the app serves a lot of different purposes. “Social media nowadays is a one way street. With this we try to get the interaction back.” A French tv-station already showed interest and at The Next Web, they already proved themselves useful by asking other startups about their pitch, resulting in a range of videopitches. Verpaalen said politicians were also very interested, as Qanda could serve as a low barrier Reddit AMA.

The Dutch connection

Technically speaking, Qanda is a French startup which calls Paris their home. But the founding team is hardly French. Besides Verpaalen, the backend developer is Dutch and lives in The Netherlands. The frontend developer is British. They do get their money from France though, with a solid investment of €200.000 from angel investors.

Making money

And how is Qanda going to make money? Well, that’s still up for debate. They are currently exploring three options. One where they sell their technology, and let other parties use their platform. The other on involves selling content. Not that of every user, but more particularly of brands, who could for instance place clickable links after their video’s. Last possibility would be to monetize their user base, by letting brands ask questions for the community to answer.

 

 

Update: Qanda won the Boost competition

Nice! Qanda just won the Boost competition on The Next Web 2016, being the most promising startup of the Conference and securing a nice amount of prize money. A startup to keep an eye on!