kula Secures €360,000 Pre-Seed Investment
Together with our new investor, we are taking kula to the next level.
Mobile app development is a multi-billion-dollar industry, yet it remains incredibly difficult to be part of it. At least for most small businesses and clubs. To enable "the little guys" to get involved too, we set ourselves the goal of "democratising app development". And today we have a huge milestone to announce: with our new investment, we are taking a major step closer to that vision.
How We Got Our Investment
So much has already happened! From school, through television and out into the big wide world. What still sounds to us like something out of a movie script has now simply become reality. It all started about 8 years ago in Vorarlberg at the HTL Bregenz. What was originally conceived as a school app for students developed into a new way to put app development directly in everyone's hands – without any prior knowledge of coding, UI or UX design. All of this is made possible by our mobile app builder.
With our appearance on 2 Minuten 2 Millionen in February, we generated enormous attention for our vision. As well as the promising offers from the investors (6 out of 7 made us an offer at the time), we also recorded over 300 sign-ups during the show itself from potential kula customers. Currently we're at almost 700! (crazy, right?).
Absolutely crazy was also the highlight of our year, when Apple invited us to Cupertino for #WWDC22. Our social media manager Jil put together a really cool highlight reel if you're interested!
Looking back, we take it quite in stride that the various offers from the 2M2M jury didn't work out. Fundraising is simply tough. Since the show, a lot of potential investors have contacted us. Our fundraising process was a real rollercoaster – we really learned a lot. In the end, we found a genuinely great investor who wants to accompany us for the long term and is providing exactly the capital we need right now to bring kula to market.
Our investor is an Upper Austrian family office, the VGW GmbH & Co KG. Managing Director Simon Wendelin says about kula: "Jules & Phil have an incredible vision ahead of them, and we believe they are the right people to make it happen." We won't reveal future plans for further rounds just yet. In any case, we want to bring a small advisory team on board in 2023 to guide us through the next steps towards launch – but for now it's time to get to work and build kula.
A big thank-you goes to the TU Wien i²c Innovation Incubation Center and to our mentors. I believe without the i²c we certainly would not be where we are today. The TU Wien i²c incubator programme gave us a solid foundation for the future.
Founding Director of the i²c, Dr. Birgit Hofreiter notes: "Julian is a student who has understood how to make the best possible use of the support offered by the Innovation Center at TU Wien. His authenticity and work ethic are appreciated by everyone here. It is a pleasure to work with him and accompany his steps towards success."
We are personally also incredibly pleased to be (gradually) living up to the impressive level of the i²c startups – something that would never have been possible without our "Alex", Alexandra Negoescu, head of the incubator programme!
The investment is primarily being used to grow the team, which has now grown to over 7 people (incredible, isn't it?). All to bring kula to market.
New to our team is also our Head of Sales Daniel Aichholzer, an experienced entrepreneur and former expansion manager at the online supermarket Alfies. He has been a long-time supporter and will help us manage all the sign-ups. While he is continuously building new apps with customers, our Phil, Damian and Flo keep coding away until we can soon launch kula for everyone.
You know what the best thing about the investment is? My co-founder Philip, who has just completed his BSc at TU Wien, said: "Finally we can focus on kula full-time with our team." And he's absolutely right. The momentum we're gaining now is truly priceless. See you at launch! :)
- Jules
Deal Details for the Curious:
Round: Pre-Seed
Investment: €360,000
Investor Equity: 12%
Shoutout to our legal and tax advisors: Herbst Kinsky, Meta Legal, PHH, and Winkler + Partner.
Photo credits: © Ilma Lolic. The kula team from left to right: Florian Hochreiter, Damian Jäger, CEO Julian Netzer, CTO Philip Niedertscheider, Daniel Aichholzer.