Funding assured – B2B business launched

plista has successfully closed a second round of financing and launches its B2B business for personalization- und targeting-services

Agitating times for the Berlin-based startup plista GmbH (www.plista.com). Despite the sluggish economic environment, plista was able to secure yet another round of financing from the High-Tech Gründerfonds (www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de) as well as DuMont Venture (www.dumontventure.de) who, together with the existing investors, Draper Investment Company and the Business Angel Peter Schüpbach, have granted additional capital to the company. The startup now has another 7-digit amount for the further development of the business at its disposal.

Simon Schneider, Investment Director, High-Tech Gründerfonds: “In addition to the team and the innovative technology, especially the promising business model was crucial for our engagement. We expect an ever-increasing demand for intelligent solutions in the field of personalization and targeting on the Internet of the future. Therefore, we see a great potential for both the domestic market and the internationalization of the service. ”

Just in time for the investment, plista rolls out its B2B strategy with products, which specifically address the needs of site operators in the fields of content and e-commerce. The new services allow for an efficient and targeted allocation of content, products and advertising throughout the Internet. plista enables website operators, publishers and advertisers to target their content at interested users without waste coverage.

The first product, plista OnSite Recommendations, offers an easy way to raise publishers’ vital figures. Users receive automatically generated and customized recommendations for content. This increases retention rates and page views substantially and facilitates additional e-commerce sales. First large publishers such as the Kölner Stadt Anzeiger of DuMont publishing house (www.ksta.de) and the download portal pro.de (www.pro.de) are already using the service and have been able to successfully increase page views, downloads and revenues.

“Our focus for the next few weeks and months is the expansion of the self-service portal, which – similar to Google AdSense® – allows publishers to generate and individually customize recommendations widgets to be easily integrated into their websites.” says co-founder and CIO Andreas Richter.

Next step for the near future will be a marketplace dedicated to trade content and traffic among the network partners of plista.

About plista GmbH:
plista GmbH (www.plista.com) offers website operators and publishers a solution for “Content and Advertising Targeting”. plista’s recommendation and personalization technology compares interests of internet users automatically, anonymously and across different sites. plista offers website operators an easy-to-use technology for personalizing their websites and advertising and a better monetization, as well as to buy-in targeted and relevant traffic.

plista was founded in July 2008 by Dominik Matyka, Christian Laase and Andreas Richter in Berlin and currently has a staff of 23. Recently plista was nominated as one of the 100 most successful start-ups in Europe by RedHerring.

Contact:
plista GmbH
Mrs. Manon Evert
Tel: +49(0)30 27577670
Fax: +49(0)32121 038193
presse@plista.com
www.plista.com

About DuMont Venture:
DuMont Venture Holding GmbH & Co. KG was founded in 2007 as a subsidiary of the publishing group M. DuMont Schauberg (Cologne, Germany). DuMont Venture invests in growth companies in the fields of digital media and IT and provides capital for their development, market entry and internationalisation.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds:
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests in young technology companies that transform promising scientific research into business enterprises. The seed financing of up to 500 K€ shall result in a technical prototype, a proof of concept or a proof of market. High-Tech Gründerfonds has access to a fund volume of around 272.0 million Euro. Investors in this public-private partnership include the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group as well as the six industry companies BASF, Robert Bosch, Carl Zeiss, Daimler, Deutsche Telekom and Siemens.

Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Simon Schneider
Investment Director
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Germany
Tel.: +49 228 965685 00
Fax: +49 228 965685 50
info@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de