beBee, the Next Unicorn Startup?

Article posted on May 3rd, 2016. Written by E. Arrieta in Diario Expansión ( Financial Newspaper )

This social network, ‘made in Spain’, is making great strides. It was created 1 year ago and it already has 11 million users.

A unicorn startup is a tech-based company that is valued at over $1 billion. This round number represents a company’s potential to become a global giant. Only a few companies in the world make this cut, and most of them are based in Silicon Valley, China or Israel. In Spain only Odigeo (eDreams) made it, although the stakes are high on Wallapop or Cabify too. Next May, another brand ‘made in Spain’ will be at The Next Web’s congress in Amsterdam as ‘one of the European startups with potential to become a unicorn’.

This potential unicorn company is beBee, a social network established in February 2015 in Madrid and that has almost 11 million users. It’s an affinity-based network: it connects people that haven’t necessarily met before but that share common interests – both professional and personal ones -. It combines Facebook and LinkedIn features and, as on LinkedIn, there is a job section, only on beBee it is free for employers. “Our business model is based exclusively on advertising and patronage. We believe we can be a very important platform for advertisers, because we offer micro-segmentation and the possibility of reaching more than 90% of their main target audience”, assures Cámara, co-founder and CEO.

Cámara speaks about “micro-segmentation” because advertisers can send their messages to those who have previously joined a certain group -called ‘hives’ on this site – like, for example, photography, music or journalism.

“beBee is much more effective than platforms like Facebook, that allow you to reach only 5% of your target.”

beBee, which is available in Spanish, English and Portuguese, has started to boost its activity in the USA in the past few weeks. Before summer, this dotcom company expects to close a series A investment round worth 15 million euros that will power the social network’s activity in the English speaking markets.

Cámara is a serial entrepreneur. In the past, the team that has founded beBee created Mixmail, the first Spanish-based free emailing service, which was sold to Ya.com. After that he set up Canalmail, that was acquired by the United States investment group VSS in 2008, for 60 million euros.

Searching for ambassadors

beBee has recently launched an ambassador program to hand out shares among its most active users. The criteria to participate in the program has been published on the site.

============================================================================

What is beBee?