In Good Kompany: Business Database Launches in Germany

By Conor Rushby |

Kompany, a Vienna-based startup which provides background information for businesses, has launched a German site following its entrance into the UK market in October. Boasting a database of 21 million companies, information is sourced from government institutions and private ratings agencies, with the aim of increasing trust to B2B interactions.

Targeting SMEs as well as independent business professionals and entrepreneurs, Germany has now become the second active market for Kompany, with its own domain and customized products.

The chief sources of information for the database are 20 official company registers, including the UK’s Companies House, the German Handelsregister and the European Business Register, as well as private credit rating agencies. In other words, official data which is publicly accessible but not publicly available in one place.

From this database users are able to assess basic information for free, such as whether or not the company actually exists and is active, the exact legal name, and where it is registered and domiciled.

Additional information, which users have to pay for, comes in the form of  official government register reports from each country companies operate in, and multi agency reports which provide credit rating information of up to three rating agencies in comparison.

The idea is to enable Kompany users to take better and more informed decisions about potential business and trade partners. While it might not be enough to tell you how a firm operates, and what its people are really like, it will show whether contacts are the real deal, with adequate credit to trade.

Despite being based in Austria, the startup chose to launch in the UK first because of the developed online corporate business information sector worth an estimated €250 million a year which already exists there. Joint CEOs Russell E. Perry and Bernhard Hoetzl told Silicon Allee that they had entered the tough market to learn quickly and to compete against the space’s strongest players.

It is often said that a strength of the European startup scene is the ability of companies to think beyond their own domestic borders from the word go. And indeed, Russell insisted that the service will be of particular use to these big thinking startups who struggle with not knowing who they are dealing with in foreign countries.

He added: “Having successfully developed international startup ventures in the past, the experienced management team at Kompany often struggled with this situation and a lack of compelling services to answer the question on how can you find out who you are doing business with. At the end, we decided to build a business background information service ourselves.”

Their plan now is to expand the company’s coverage step by step, aiming to put 100 million companies onto the database eventually, to  overcome the barriers to business presented by different languages, money, and a lack of knowledge of foreign business.

To celebrate their German launch, Kompany is offering a ‘Germany subscription,’ giving a free premium account for 12 months, complete with a free local company register report and a discount of 20 percent on all additional international register reports.