Historical Timeline

Our journey originates from a vision developed at a big party.

From humble begins (yes, we were founded in a living room), amiando has grown to become the European leader for on-demand event registration and –ticketing services. Here are some highlights of our journey so far:

2006

July

The Soccer Worldcup takes place in Germany and some of the amiando founders throw a big (and with big we mean 200-300 people) party on Felix' rooftop terrace. Guestlist management and payment management (everybody was asked to bring 10 Euro for beef and beer) turned out to be a complete mess, thus spawning the idea of launching an online platform to ease those processes.

August

Felix's living room is occupied for the upcoming weeks and months and the first prototype of the platform is created. Four of the six co-founders contributed to programming and interface design back then. Amiando is still limited and focused on private invitations. First temporary company holding is incorporated in Munich.

September

First invitations are sent over the system and hundreds of beta users use amiando to invite for birthday and new-years eve parties.

October

There must be angels: The founders complete their university theses and simultaneously attract seed funding from renowned business angels like Lukasz Gadowski, Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz and Stephan Glaenzer.

December

amiando 1.0 launches on December 8th! Still limited to private invitations but an instant hit with thousands of users and invited guests.

2007

January

First professional party and conference organizers approach amiando and request features for ticket selling and handling. First prototypes for ticketing are created.

February

Wellington Partners Venture Capital joins the amiando family in a second seed round.

Next Conference in Hamburg becomes the first professional customer of amiando.

The "Invite by SMS" feature is in closed beta, but never made it into the public product.

April

The business center decides to divide the amiando loft office into smaller compartments. Forced to close down the amiando inner-office mini-golf court. amiando moves into its first real office.

May

The sixth co-founder Marc joins the team full-time.

June

amiando 2.0 launches officially as the first on-demand event ticketing service in Europe.

September

amiando 3.0 launches and makes amiando international by supporting English, Spanish, French and German.

Leweb3 Conference in Paris becomes the first international customer of amiando

October

amiando becomes official launch partner of Google Opensocial and moves the complete IT department to Googleplex in Mountain View for two weeks. Google founder Sergej Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt review first amiando Opensocial prototypes.

November

Credit card acquirers threaten to stop credit card acceptance due to transaction volume rising too fast. Situation settled after multiple phone calls and official bank certifications.

December

What a year! Just a few months after launching the on-demand ticketing service amiando is already doing hundreds of thousands of Euro in turnover per month.

2008

January

amiando turns down first acquisition offers.

Techcrunch.com uses amiando for the annual Techcrunch Crunchies event in Silicon Valley

February

Finally we manage to organize our own birthday party: The one-year birthday amiando party takes place with hundreds of guests – it was a blast!

April

The return of the angels: Wellington Partners and AdInvest join multi-million Series A financing to support accelerated growth of amiando.

June

We've grown in size (25 employees) and move to our new and current headquarters in Munich (see office video here)

July

amiando 4.0 launches with ViralTickets. Dozens of night shifts push IT and product development to the limit but release date is kept on the minute. Extreme stress but a great relief in the IT Team after everything worked out smoothly for the most part.

The infamous car-pool feature (which everyone loved but nobody used) is removed.

August

Roadtrip: The amiando team sets off to a two day spirit-boosting team roadtrip in Austria.

Urs Haeusler, former CEO TIcketonline Switzerland joins amiando as senior manager.

October

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally visits the amiando office for the European launch of Facebook Connect. Amiando presents its Facebook Connect implementation as first partner in Europe.

December

amiando 5.0 launches with amiandoEVENTS, the professional on-demand event registration solution. Dozens of event agencies serve as launch customers.

2009

January

A highlight already on the second day of the new year: amiando gets awarded as "Innovation leader of the year 2008" – on ranks 1, 2 and 3.

February

amiando becomes global partner of Twestivals and supports more than 200 simultaneous events worldwide for charity fundraising purposes.

BMW decides to use amiando for official online ticketing for BMW events like sport tournaments, driver trainings, etc.

June

The World Economic Forum pre-nominates amiando to be a "World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer".

amiando wins at the Techcrunch Europas awards: Highly Commended as "Best Webservice/Application EMEA" and finalist as "Best Startup Founders".

Publicis Live uses amiando for prestigious Monaco Media Forum

July

Yay –the first half of 2009 again was a blast: All numbers significantly better than plan and an exciting roadmap ahead!

August

The infamous amiando Poker tournament reaches record attendance of 35 players.

September

The amiandas and amiandos on the Oktoberfest – a different kind of success-story ;-)

October

amiando wins the Bavarian Online Prize 2009 on the IT innovation days in munich.

November

UNESCO Charity Gala 2009’s participant supported by amiando is entering the final phase. Definitely a benefit for both sides!

With the donation-tool specially developed for the UNESCO it was possible for the first time not just to collect the entry fees but also to rise funds easily online in the run-up to the event.

December

A exciting and successful year is coming to an end. As usual the best part comes last: The World Economic Forum elects amiando, aside from Twitter and Playfish, and as the only german company as a Technology Pioneer 2010.

2010

January

amiando is initiating a large online raffle for the benefit of the victims of the eathquake in Haiti. Numerous German and Swiss internet-based companies are joining together to raise 50,000 €.

February

The Art Directors Club für Deutschland e.V. chooses amiando as official ticketing partner of the ADC Summit 2010

April

amiando is official launch partner of Facebook Social Plugins and integrates it into its websites. We take our mission one step further: democratizing events.

July

Eurovision song contest winner Lena Meyer-Landruth uses amiando for selling her tour tickets.

August

amiando 6.0 launches with a new design and an improved usability. The relaunch includes an extensive facelift of the website, a revolutionary low pricing and a one of a kind email tool specifically tailored to the needs of event organizers.

2011

January

amiando is now a part of XING (www.xing.com)

The global Social Media Week is exclusively organized with amiando. Hundreds of events with tens of thousands of participants benefit from our innovative amiando tools.

February

amiando launches the first ticketing integration within the XING platform. More than 10 million XING members are now able to organize ticketing events on XING.