Photo: Linkfive

Linkfive: A Central Platform for App Marketing

Anyone who offers apps in different stores has to invest a lot of work to make them available to customers. Special offers, marketing campaigns and data evaluation have to be performed manually in every app store. Linkfive offers a central platform that can be used to manage and set up different app stores. Co-founder Alexander Thiele answers our Seven Questions in our interview.

Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves.

Linkfive: Linkfive is a subscription management platform for companies that want to dynamically create, manage, improve and test their subscriptions, for example in the Apple App Store. Malte and I had already come up with the idea for Linkfive many years ago, and we held on to it until we found the right point in time at the beginning of the year. Malte and I met at Doodle in Berlin and have been good friends since then.

Alexander Thiele (33) is our co-founder in the tech field, since he’s always had a special place in his heart for software and apps. Alex was previously the CTO of Prosperity in Berlin and a senior engineer at Doodle and has already put a few apps in the stores. Malte Schiebelmann (38) is our co-founder in the product field and has always been passionate about fantastic products. Malte was CPO at Doodle as well as head of product at Zattoo and is involved in the development of some highly utilized products. We’ve also had new members on board for several months now after welcoming Nini and Stefan to the team. Nini is our software and app developer in B2C. Stefan is our product manager and previously worked for various B2B companies.

“We feel more than ready to completely solve the issue”

Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?

Linkfive: Modern companies are agile and constantly growing, which means the subscription products that the companies offer also change. How can an app associated with a marketing campaign in Spain offer a special for 4.99 euros instead of 9.99 euros – spontaneously and from one day to the next? How can a company quickly change its subscription offer and delete or add a new one? A lot of product managers would like to perform A/B testing, but the technological challenge is usually too complex and resource consuming. Linkfive was developed to quickly and easily manage subscriptions and to create or modify a subscription offer, perform A/B testing or even run marketing campaigns within minutes – and it’s all done without changing one line of code. And that benefits both developers and product managers in equal measure.

Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!

Linkfive: Every company can obviously develop its own system, but then every company will also need additional resources. We talked with a lot of companies and they all face the same problems that have only been partially solved or not at all. The competition in our area is also still in an early stage and hasn’t been able to properly solve our problems. Until now, Silicon Valley companies are the only ones who have been brave enough to tackle the problem. European companies seem to be intimidated by the subject. But we feel more than ready to not only raise the issue, but to also completely solve it!

Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?

Linkfive: The first major challenge was our platform itself. We develop all of our software ourselves and have already written more than 30,000 lines of code. We’re now already in the test phase and our productive system is currently undergoing intensive testing with several apps. The next major challenge will be marketing and of course also finding even more impressive talent for our growing startup!

Linkfive can currently only be used by invitation

Munich Startup: How is business going?

Linkfive: We just got started with Linkfive at the beginning of the year, which is why our figures are perhaps a bit technical, but here you go:

  • 30,000+ lines of code
  • 10,000+ pub/sub events each day
  • 5 KPIs
  • 6 cloud services
  • 3 public SDKs

Several customers have also already integrated Linkfive. At the moment, however, Linkfive can only be used by invitation. If you’re interested, you can simply write us an email, connect through LinkedIn or use the contact form on our website.

Munich Startup: What do you think about Munich as a startup location?

Linkfive: Munich is a beautiful city with a high quality of living, which attracts talent from around the world. The Technical University of Munich and LMU are right around the corner and host many talented individuals, who we urgently need now and in the future. Thanks to its location, Munich can also be quickly reached from anywhere in Europe.

Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?

Linkfive: I would say hidden champion for app users and a future shooting star for companies.