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Here’s a short timeline of the most important moments that marked 2020 for Russmedia Equity Partners (RMEP) and our portfolio companies.
We started off the new year by welcoming to the team Nicola Szekely as managing director at RMEP. He was a great addition to the team and his background in e-commerce and deep experience in marketplaces helped a lot our portfolio companies, but also in streamlining some processes.
In February we hosted our first Bootstrapping meetup in Vienna, which was a great success and it gave the CEOs and founders the chance to exchange knowledge on marketing hacks, how to increase revenues, cost-efficient market penetration or new trends in responsive website optimization. As soon as this will be possible we’ll for sure host another meetup like this.
In March we had our last in-person meetup in Barcelona. It was great to meet everyone, although when returning to their home countries many of the participants returned to lockdown. We have great memories from that get-together though.
A few weeks after most of the world was already in lockdown, our friends from Hooray Studios offered free personalized coloring books for hundreds of thousands of children quarantined across the globe. A great campaign that made quarantine days more colorful for thousands of families.
One of the things we learned this year is that we need to move fast and we need to be super adaptable. That is exactly what the CVonline.hu and DACE.hu teams managed to do.
Rapid and Turbo recruitment brings recruiters a new way to reach job seekers directly in the virtual space and help them apply for the positions as simply and quickly as possible. With this brand-new digital recruitment solution, CVonline targets those who fit the most and are open to switching jobs. Targeted Facebook ads attracting potential and relevant candidates as soon as 24 hours.
Because in person dating was not really an option during lockdown, Dating Central Europe rapidly implemented a new feature that allowed people to have their first dates safely. The new video dating feature was developed and launched in only 2 weeks on randivonal.hu, shortly after the first lockdown this March.
In May RMEP offered support to the erento team in acquiring Campanda, the world’s largest marketplace for motorhome bookings. This acquisition was a great add-on for erento, and it went through in very unusual circumstances. All the negotiation, all the conversations were done remotely, the parties met in person only at the notary for signing the papers.
Almost everyone in the #russmedianetwork was working remotely and not meeting with the team and not being able to get together as usual was hard for all of us, but with creativity and ingenuity our teams managed to make the best of it: the ALPINRESORTS.com team organized a live concert on zoom, Jobiqo hosted live cooking and yoga sessions.
Not being able to organize the usual meetups, we still organized tech sharing sessions and meetups for sales and marketing and later, in October CTO and Product meetups.
In July more good news came from erento, as they managed to become climate neutral.
Dating Central Europe had a very intense year with many successful projects, which brought the DACE’s randivonal.hu the best month in history in terms of revenue this August, more than a year after joining the Russmedia family.
2020 radically changed the way we travel and plan our vacations that is why interest for motorhomes and private rentals increased significantly. Publi24, one of the largest horizontal marketplaces in Romania acquired and relaunched cazare24.ro a short term rental platform contributing to the offerings the well established Romanian player already has.
End of September brought a new member to the network as Russmedia Equity Partners acquired 60% of Bergfex, Europe’s largest tourism platform in the Alps.
We started October with a premiere for us and for the portfolio teams and that being the completely remote CTO/Product meetup. Two days with great presentations, knowledge sharing and even networking, all done remotely.
In November we were honored to find that the “Digital Female Leader Award” was awarded to Anke Odrig, founder of LITTLE BIRD. A great accomplishment that comes to underline the great talent and fantastic capabilities of our female founders.
We end this year on an optimistic note, looking forward to having an even better year and with new opportunities. 2020 was a challenging year, but from which we come out stronger and more united. We learned a lot in the past 10 months, and we found, once more, how important it is to have a network of fantastic people that are able to support each when in need.
We hope that 2021 will bring new members to the family and we can’t wait to be able to get back to our regular, in-person meetups.
Have a fantastic new year!
