Seed investment: WWM Ventures invests in online platform standBystand
Press release from 28.04.2019
standBystand is an online booking platform for specialized freelancers for the assembly of event and exhibition stands.
The company enables trade fair construction companies and event agencies to search specifically for freelancers to assemble trade fair stands, to contact them automatically and to "match" them to your project. In doing so, standBystand takes care of the entire order and billing process, ensuring compliance with the legal framework. Today, the company announces its first round of financing from WWM with Dr. Christian Coppeneur-Gülz.
The vision of the two founders is to drastically simplify the matching of specialized freelancers and clients through intelligent online processes. The financial advantage for the client lies not only in lean processes, but also in the possibility of sourcing freelancers "on the spot" and thus saving unnecessary expenses for travel and hotel costs. This is ultimately made possible by an integrated evaluation system that also allows the booking of "unknown" freelancers with little risk. For freelancers, the platform offers payment security through the integration of invoicing and also ensures optimized utilization through access to numerous clients.
The startup standBystand was founded in the Netherlands in 2018 and already has hundreds of qualified freelancers in the Netherlands. With the money from the first round of funding, the startup now wants to first build up the German market on the client side for matching with freelancers in the Netherlands. In parallel, the recruiting of freelancers in Germany will begin.
"The special thing about standBystand is its focus on the trade show construction and event industry. The existing platforms for freelancers do not address the specific requirements of the clients and challenges of freelancers in the field of assembly. In addition, the platform encounters a market that is not yet digitized and is characterized by low transparency. The European market for trade fair assembly alone has an estimated annual volume of over €1 billion," says Dr. Christian Coppeneur-Gülz, Managing Director of WWM GmbH & Co. KG.
About WWM Ventures
WWM Ventures is the investment wing of WWM GmbH & Co. KG and specifically invests EarlyStage in startups that digitize and disrupt processes and business models in the field of live communication. The investments include store2be (online booking platform for offline action spaces) and ExpoCloud® (online platform for planning, execution and analysis of live communication measures).
About WWM
WWM GmbH & Co. KG, as an expert in event marketing on demand, offers the first cloud-based software solution for planning, executing and analyzing trade fairs and events. This pioneering digital achievement is bundled in the online portal myWWM, which makes event marketing on demand simple, effective and efficient. Live marketing at the push of a button can be summarized by the term event resource management (ERM). The myWWM ERM system includes planning tools such as Studio, the supplier-independent online 3D configurator for exhibition stands, as well as an event performance app for live marketing. With the Event-Metrics module, trade fair visitors are automatically recorded in a DSGVO-compliant manner in order to measure and analyze event marketing success. The innovation driver WWM has received several awards: Federal winner of the DIHK "WeDoDigital" award, winner of the "AC2 Innovation Award", "Best of Industry Software" (Innovation Award IT) and "Hidden Champion of Medium-Sized Businesses".