- Emre Sokullu, Founder & CEO
GROU.PS Inc is an innovative social technologies studio based in Istanbul with a proxy office in Palo Alto, CA.
Our flagship product is GROU.PS which is a leading social groupware platform that allows people to come together and form private or public interactive communities around a shared interest, work or affiliation. The functionality of any GROU.PS group is limited only by the members' collective imagination and ambition. The GROU.PS platform is used to create a wide variety of community sites, including online gaming forums, e-learning classrooms, fan clubs, charity fundraising campaigns, college alumni societies, and event planning portals. In short, any organization seeking to aggregate and organize people online can greatly improve its effectiveness, engagement and appeal by migrating to the GROU.PS platform. By giving any user the ability to create an easy-to-use, yet powerful, social network, GROU.PS is propelling online collaboration, communication and content sharing in a new socially aware direction..
Vision
Democratize online community-building and enable everyone to monetize their content and groups.
Management
Emre Sokullu, Founder & CEO
Sean X. Yu, CFO
Financials
GROU.PS Inc. is privately held, with 50% of revenues outside of the US. The company raised venture capital financing from Golden Horn Ventures and TIMAR..
Apps
People, Blogs, Forum, Chat, Photos, Videos, Wiki, Events, Funds, Groups, Files, Links, Music...
Headquarters
Palo Alto, CA and development offices in Istanbul, Turkey
Sample Groups
LAGbook: www.lagbook.net
The Peru Initiative: peruproject.grou.ps
Business Model
GROU.PS is free to a large proportion of group founders and affordable for the rest, with subscription revenues strong enough to keep GROU.PS growing rapidly.
Users
9 million registered members registered across the 200,000 groups created since 2006; 20,000 of them are active.
Main Group Themes
Education
Gaming & Fantasy Role Playing
Entertainment
Non-Profits
Professional (Internal Collaboration)
Member Growth
Key Milestones
November
GROU.PS development began in Palo Alto, during Emre's visit to the USA. Emre spent his days at Starbucks coding the early prototype and writing a business plan.
December
Emre returns back to Turkey.
February
GROU.PS launched. Featured on Digg on its first day of launch; 1,200 members signed up in a single day
February
GROU.PS, still a one-man show, flooded by interview requests by US investors.
March
US investors pass (mostly because the project is out of their geographic focus).
June
Emre meets Cem Sertoglu, the first advisor of the company. Cem was a founder of US based corporate alumni social networking service, SelectMinds.
June
With Cem's help, Emre gets a business visa for a trip to the USA to explore investment opportunities and grow the team.
November
GROU.PS reaches 30,000 members.
February
Turned down by investors, Emre gets a part time job in the US for a work visa. Development slows down.
May
GROU.PS gets a new home page and reaches 50,000 members. The company is still ridiculously a 1-man show.
December
Golden Horn Ventures, Turkey's first venture capital company, shows serious interest in GROU.PS. Talks start.
January
Golden Horn Ventures decides to incubate GROU.PS with $30K in initial funding.
February
GROU.PS contracts a designer. Emre is now back full time.
March
Soon-to-become very popular Videos module is born with a YouTube only backend.
March
GROU.PS now has more than 100,000 members. A new completely redesigned home page launches.
June
GROU.PS landed $500K in Seed funding
July
GROU.PS introduces Flash video hosting and conversion a la YouTube (but white label).
October
The new videos module drives meteoric growth. Servers burned! Downtimes.
February
Staff grew to 6. Services back to normal. Site became much more reliable.
April
Product innovations continue. ActivityRank launched.
June
GROU.PS landed $1.5 millions in Series A funding
June
Reached our 1 millionth user
August
Our new Istanbul office is in Mecidiyekoy.
December
In less than 6 months, the site gains another million of members.
March
GROU.PS integrates with Yahoo Groups.
May
Reached the 100k groups mark
October
Launched subscription plans
November
Made our first acquisition: Social Project LLC
November
Signed a termsheet for $3 million in Series B funding from TIMAR Ventures
February
Transfer of TagWorld and Social Project groups initiated
March
Formation of a professional customer support department
May
Moved to our new Istanbul office in the Levent district
July
Official launch of subscription services.
July
Launch of TheBook template
July
Availability for iPhone
July
Launch of mobile app generator for Blackberry and Android devices
February
Gross Profitability
May
Launch of LoveBucks, a new content monetization method for our publishers.
May
GROU.PS reaches 10 million members.
November
Net Profitability
