Archify: Viennese Start-Up Moves to Berlin

Archify (who started out as EgoArchive) will follow Viennese start-ups

(former Garmz) and

to the German capital, abandoning Vienna almost completely. Gerald Bäck (in the middle of the picture) informed futurezone during the re:publica conference that his young company attracted investment fromBalderton Capitalin return for a 20 percent share of the business. The venture capitalists have also invested in the Facebook game supplierWooga, the location serviceSCVNGR, the online gameHabboand in the AirBnB-competitorHousetrip.

Gerald Bäck told futurezone, `In Vienna there are few people with the necessary skills, in Berlin there are more people who potentially fit the job`. Another reason to move away from Vienna but not to London was that, `Our market is actually in the USA, and the internet sector currently looks more towards Berlin than London`. Furthermore real estate prices in the British capital are much too high, another reason why the decision to relocate to Berlin was easy. Bäck also said `It was clear that staying in Vienna was not an option after attending a start-up boot camp in Copenhagen`. The team of five, however, will not relocate to Berlin immediately. Bäck, for example, wants to commute between the Austrian and German capitals.

The Development of a Personal Search Engine
Currently Archify has 5,000 registered users, of whom 3,000 are active, and of these 80 percent use Archify on a daily basis. The major aim of Archify is to complement Google by offering a browser plug-in on which all websites you visit can be saved in a separate account. Furthermore, Archify can be linked with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and content posted on these saved to aid in future searches. As a next step it will also be possible to integrate the plug-in with Gmail.

`Google is great for searching for information you don`t yet know`, said Bäck. However, with Archify you have the ability to search your social networks and your surfing history. As opposed to other tools like Evernote and Delicious, it is possible to automatically record your internet use rather than having to actively save it. Bäck has identified start-ups CloudMagic and Greplin as direct competitors, but notes that Archify is one step ahead of them in the saving of browsing histories. By September the company intends to have entered the open-beta-phase and to have introduced apps for iOS and Android to the market. According to Bäck it was this move that made the venture-capital investment possible.