Enbrite.ly, the Hungarian team from our fall ‘14 batch, just closed a 750k funding round from Austrian SpeedInvest, Enbritely Holdings (a consortium of angels), and Evli Bank plc. This included the 500k investment prize they won at Slush, only a day after graduating from Startup Sauna.
We managed to grab Oszkar and Gergo from Enbrite.ly for a quick online interview.
You guys won the Slush 100 pitching competition out of 1200 startups from all over the world winning €500k in investment. Now the round has grown to 750k and the deal is finally done, how do you feel?
O: The first answer is this. The second is that I really want to see our numbers growing now. It took a while to combine Speedinvest and Finnish Angels, but I really believe it was worth it and will support our business development.G: I wrote after winning Slush that this was the absolute craziest day of my life. It turns out it was the new baseline for further crazier things to come. Then again, raising the round taught us a lot about how this world really works, and it’s been amazing so far. We are lucky to have found good people to work with, and are amped to move forward (ie. start spending the money to get this company nearer to what we dreamed it would become). And on the local terms, we’re literally one-in-a-million 🙂
What was the most useful thing you got out of Sauna?
O: Never afraid to change. Quickly!G: That’s a hard pick because the power of the program wasn’t any single point, but in how immersive it was as a whole. It really brought down both the physical and mental barriers in what’s possible and reachable through hard work and relentlessly looking for the right people. In addition, realization that the world is not out to get us but rather there’s a bunch of people who would want to help us if they knew we existed.Plus it completely rocketed my imagined limit of possible work output, that’s for sure.
What are you future plans now that you finally closed the funding round?
O: Conquer Europe, experiment with new markets, set up one of the best workplaces with the best team ever.G: We’re going to bring the conversation regarding advertising fraud to Europe and scale our operation far and wide. Product-wise, we want to ruin Christmas for fraudsters specializing in mobile after covering all the other important segments (such as video) while protecting all the actors within the advertising ecosystem.
What advice would you give to the startups of our newest batch that started this Monday?
O: Accept that you do not know anything about your business and it will last long.If this is done: eat everything you hear there, do as many mistakes as you can, implement the lessons learned into your business and product development processes – on the go!Oh yeah, never be late – and even if you are mediterranean! Get your team used to it too – you need to remote manage them now.G: DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Or they’ll rip your head off. Plus you’re just going to leave disappointed by not getting the most out of what the programme has to offer. Utilize every bit of exposure, connections, information, and leads they give you, as it pulls an immense weight in this little world where everybody knows everybody else. And be proud that you’ve made it this far!
Anything else you want to say?
O: Don’t be afraid to put your asses on the line, listen to your mentors, and pivot! There are cheap bars but you need to travel a lot by bus.G: Startup Sauna rocks, fistbumps are a higher form of communication, and it’s hazardous to try ‘networking’ in Kallio.
Big-ups for the boys on closing the round, keep on rockin’!
