Atomico announced it has invested in Ge.tt, a Danish startup that seeks to make it easy to share files with people you know. Currently if you’re trying to send a file greater than 25mb, you either need to find workarounds, upload it to a sketchy service, or just put it on a USB stick and drive it to your friends house, like in that XKCD cartoon. Atomico is backed by Niklas Zennström, one of the co-founders of Skype.
Ge.tt has such a simple yet valuable service. It allows you to select a file, copy an URL while it’s uploading, and then send the URL to a friend who can start downloading the file while it’s still uploading from your computer. The whole package is well designed and easy to use. There are two free usage tiers for users. Without creating an account you are given 250mb of storage space, but if you create an account you have access to 2gb. Users who want more storage, such as professional users or people with large file requirements, will pay small, tiered fees. For $5 a month they get 5GB, for $10 they get 40GB and for $20 they get 100GB.
Mattias Ljungman, Partner at Atomico, said: “Ge.tt is a great business, and it was brilliant to find it unexpectedly in Copenhagen. It’s incredibly easy to use, and once you start using it, you soon realise the benefits it brings. The company already has users across the world, and it’s easy to see why. It has great founders who have a real focus on the user experience, and a big opportunity in front of it.”
Ge.tt was founded by Tobias Baunbæk and Mathias Buus Madsen who came up with the idea while studying computer science at Aarhus University. They and classmates often needed to share files with many people on different platforms, and often resorted to using USB sticks. Although there were file-transfer services, none suited their needs.
They realized that a combination of streaming technologies and an intelligent queuing system would make for a much faster and simpler technology. And that this could be done in a browser, with no software installation. They created a prototype, entered Venture Cup, and won €6,700. This kickstarted the company, and the founders left university to focus full time on it.
