Xamoom scores at local awards

The location-based service platform xamoom just won the community prize of A1’s “Austria’s Next Top Startup” competition securing a place in the run for the Kapsch’s “Startup Of The Year” title. Moreover, cofounders Georg Holzer und Bruno Hautzenberger also won the golden CREOS in the “Digital & Social Media” category at the advertising awards in Carinthia. As the CEO explained, the awards had a strategic value for the team.

“The competitions were not associated with money, just attention. We entered them because in both cases we knew that there was a chance of winning them,” said Holzer and added that for xamoom this attention came just at the right time. They will soon launch their product and are working to attract new customers. “One of our main target groups are advertising agencies and the marketing prize put us on the industry’s map.”

From art to business

Xamoom provides a whole infrastructure for location-based services and has plenty possibilities for usage, for example for tourist or museum guides, applications for public transportation or as solution for hotels and bars. “Our platform is multi-tenant, highly scalable and multilingual. Due to some innovations from almost three years of experience with smart posters/labels our main selling points are low monthly fees and fast rollouts,” explained Holzer.

The idea for xamoom started back in 2012 when the cofounders were working on the net culture project pingeb.org. They placed over 250 yellow stickers with QR codes and NFC chips in their hometown to introduce local artists the community. “This tiny project got so much attention  […]. And after winning the biggest art prize in Austria, the Bank Austria Kunstpreis, we knew that there was something much bigger,” Holzer said of his journey from an art project to a business idea. 

A service for good ideas and little know-how

When asked what helped them most along their way, the CEO highlights the role of communication and startup support in Austria. “Not keeping our plans secret helped us tremendously in shaping our product and business model. […] Especially helpful was our incubator, the AplusB build Gründerzentrum.” While the team believes their tool will do a lot to aide others with great ideas, Holzer thinks that “most exciting [projects] will be those we haven’t yet imagined.”

In the next weeks the team of two will have a product ready and aims to attract their first customers already. “That will be a huge, huge thing for us […].We want to give context to the world. And we want to give the technology for mobile location-based services into the hands of those who have good ideas but little money and know-how.”