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2014: The lightbulb moment Our co-founders, Niklas Dorn, Maël Frize and Simon Kontschak, realized that the way people share files and get feedback is a chaotic mess. So with a well-balanced cocktail of marketing strategy, UX design and software engineering, they decided to do something about it.
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2015: Making video feedback beta We worked closely with video production agencies across Europe to create a prototype for our video commenting tool. For the first time, people could just tap on a video to pause it and add a comment, instead of wasting time writing out timecodes.
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2015: Our first customers It was a cold winter’s morning. Filestage was live and open for business, and Christmas was just around the corner. And then it happened. Our first customers walked through our virtual doors – and they’re still with us today. Prost!
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2016: Planting the seed We raised a €600,000 seed round with High-Tech Gründerfonds. Go team!
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2017: Time to grow We have lift off! We doubled the size of our team to develop commenting tools for PDFs, images and audio files. And we onboarded over 200 new customers in just 12 months.
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2018: Evolving our platform After spending a few years working with some of the world’s biggest brands and agencies, we realized that managing feedback was just the tip of the iceberg. So we evolved Filestage into a review and approval platform, letting teams set up consistent reviewer groups for all their files and projects.
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2019: That’s a lot of files! We reached a mind-boggling milestone of 1 million files reviewed and approved with Filestage. That’s everything from brand films and advertising campaigns to medical paperwork and brochures.
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2020: Raising our Series A We raised €2.8 million in our Series A funding round with Newion, seed+speed and High-Tech Gründerfonds.
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2021: Here we grow again We grew our team to over 50 people from 21 different countries around the world. All with the shared mission of helping teams get their best work approved.
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2022: Saying hello to HTML After successfully rolling out live website reviews, we followed up with HTML support for banner ads, emails, and other interactive content.
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2023: Launching the free trial and plan To help more teams put Filestage to the test, we introduced a free seven-day trial. And we also rolled out a free plan for freelancers and small businesses!
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The future: Onwards and upwards… Stay tuned to see where our story takes us.