Netural as a Digital Incubator: Storyblok takes off

Another success for Netural. The well-known British investor Firstminute Capital joins the spin-off "Storyblok", a superior headless content management system, with a seven-digit euro amount. Also on board is the Austrian VC fund Capital300.

This coup gives considerable international lift to the latest Netural spin-off. Storyblok enters the stage in the footsteps of Roomle, a digital furniture platform already established around the globe, used by prominent industry players, itself "mother" of a joint venture with the Tyrolean timber company Egger, and currently in the second round of financing.

After maturing for 30 months in Netural´s incubator, Storyblok spun off as an independent company led by masterminds Alexander Feiglstorfer and Dominik Angerer in November 2017, and hit the ground running: "Their drive was amazing", says Netural´s Albert Ortig: "Within months, Storyblok added an impressive number of well-known brands to its client list." He emphasizes that, Netural´s excellent standing and in-depth market insights notwithstanding, this stellar performance is owed largely to the commitment of the two founders.

The high-flying young company soon appeared on the radar of Firstminute Capital, a venture capital firm led by Lastminute.com and Made.com co-founder Brent Hoberman, and specializing in European startups. Joining Capital300 (Vienna / Linz), the Brits will invest 2.5 million US dollars in the ongoing development of Storyblok and pick up 20per cent of the company shares in turn. Effective immediately, Hoberman´s accelerator Founders Factory will be supporting the brisk further growth of Storyblok, with investors such as L'Oréal, easyJet and the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group as its background.

Netural CEO Albert Ortig sees his strategy confirmed: It pays to incubate promising product and service ideas ideas that emerge from Netural´s daily business, and eventually spin them off as separate entities. "More and more frequently, we operate as a business incubator, a very solid one actually, keeping a safe distance from the current “gold rush”, while offering talented employees the chance to build their own business success." Just a few weeks previously, social media specialist Social Hearts spun off from Netural´s core business and started out as an independent company.

Simple, fully customizable and really future-proof

Storyblok has exciting potential. The idea behind this software is captivating: While classic content management systems sacrifice their flexibility by running both administration and front-end presentation at once, Storyblok separates these chores, providing developers with unimpeded control over the user interfaces and focusing on the core task of every CMS, easy content handling. This "headless" approach allows parallel use for web, apps and all other platforms with suitable interfaces.

Designed as a cloud solution, renders in-house IT infrastructure obsolete. All the better it meets the challenge of modern digital strategies to build tomorrow´s applications without conclusive predictions regarding their final scope and concrete implementations.

Find out more about Storyblok: www.storyblok.com.