Amsterdam, March 26, 2015
iLost reaches its crowdfunding goal of €100,000 in one week
iLost, the search engine for lost and found articles, attained its funding goal of €100,000 in less than a week. The Dutch start-up expects this figure to increase significantly over the coming weeks, bringing the goal of becoming “the Google of lost and found” one step closer to reality.
iLost was created with the aim of bringing all lost and found articles around the world together in one place. In 2013 the company attracted its first significant investment for the development of the software, the building of a website and the creation of a base in the Netherlands. Today the Netherlands’ largest movie theater chain, the largest festivals and a number of large municipalities have joined iLost. Building on this success in the Netherlands, the company now plans to expand across Dutch borders. Six days after the launch of the crowdfunding campaign, around 80 funders had realized the goal of €100,000. iLost expects this amount to at least double in the coming weeks.
Support from the community
iLost has consciously chosen for crowdfunding. “Brand recognition and support from the community are very important to us,” says iLost founder Hanneke Stegweg. “We want anyone who has lost or found something to immediately think of iLost. With crowdfunding you don’t only get a significant capital injection, it also gives you a large number of brand ambassadors who have invested in you.”
European rollout
According to Stegweg, the European rollout is not only logical, but also necessary: “In recent years we have seen that our system works and that you have a six times greater chance of finding lost articles through iLost. We have a great competitive edge. That’s why this is the time to introduce iLost in neighboring countries. We will use the funds we have raised to add geographic information to the description of the found articles and we are going make our search engine multilingual. We are also going to build an app for iPhone and Android and we now have the means to expand our sales team. We are starting with Belgium and Luxemburg and then we plan to roll out in the UK, Germany, France, The United States and the rest of the world.”
For the crowdfunding campaign of iLost, refer to http://www.oneplanetcrowd.com/en/project/92855