Swiss „success story“ Wuala.com - founded by Dominik Grolimund and completely self-funded - is a „social online storage“: Files can be stored securely online, can be accessed from any computer and shared with friends or groups. The 28-year-old CEO of Wuala points out: „I don’t think it’s the Swiss success story, it’s just that currently it’s going really well for us. Since we launched a public beta in August, we have a very nice growth. There are 53 million files that have been stored and shared in the Wuala network.“ But he also admits: „There’s a lot of room for improvement – although we try to communicate it in very simple terms, our technology is very complex.“
The Swiss startup faces dozens of competitors like Box.net and even Microsoft and Google are trying to compete in that space...According to Dominik, Wuala tries to communicate mainly three areas: Technology (data aren’t stored on servers but in a pier-to-pier network), privacy (all files are incripted on your computer in such a way that not even the provider has access) and service as a desktop app which can still be started from the web. Users of Wuala get one gigabyte for free and have two choices to increase storage: „You can either trade local disk space“, says Dominik or „you can buy additional storage. That is where we generate our revenue and why we dropped the ads - we are really surprised by how many users buy additional storage.“ He adds: „Our goal is to become the leading online storage and I think wer’re on a good track. When it comes to online storage, we believe that only our technology can provide the two critical aspects privacy and low costs.“
Dominik thinks that „as a technology company we waited too long to go to the customer“. He finds it of utmost importance „to focus on the product and don’t do marketing. So far our marketing budget is zero and we still got tens of thousands of users. Have a simple and working product that people love and share.“
More interviews from StartUpCamp Switzerland will follow in the days to come and can be found
@ www.tiburon-tv.com
