When WeTransfer started back in 2009 we were placing long bets that certain market conditions would move in our favour. We believed that ‘small’ data and transparency would build long term trust.
With the rise of fake news and the increased understanding (particularly in Europe) of data rights and privacy punctuated by GDPR, market conditions shifted. Towards us.
Today some 42m people in over 192 countries use WeTransfer every month.
Some of the basic settings that have become de facto within WeTransfer — namely;
No sign up. A lean data policy. 30% of media gifted to the arts.
Some are being adopted by others in an attempt to harness some of the trust that we have amassed over our short history.
Not to mention WeTransfer has a Net Promotor Score of 85%.
WeTransfer unlike many tech companies was born out of a multitude of different design driven businesses; Oy the design agency that Bas Beerens started, Nalden.net the blog of Nalden and later Present Plus (the company later acquired by WeTransfer owner of Nalden.net, Kuvva.com, Gallery 33) started by Nalden and myself.
For that reason user experience, flow and frictionless movement across the site have been at the forefront of all decision making, with the priority being put on;
People first
Creativity second
Technology third, in that order.
Since we started there have been a few companies to emerge that we would like to call our peers. One of which has been a beacon of great design-thinking, embracing hardware and software design, building tremendous kudos within the design world and in Silicon Valley.
This company has taken on huge design, production and logistical challenges with apparent ease and has continued to design and build products with great relevance.
As of today we are very proud to announce that the team behind 53, the famous software company renowned for building products such as Paper, Paste and Pencil will join WeTransfer and that their major products; Paper and Paste will become part of the WeTransfer set of beautifully obvious tools.
Their brilliant team will also become part of the WeTransfer family.
Much of the conversation around this partnership took place at the Founders Forum conference in London, for which I am very grateful to Brent and Poppy for their continued curation of one of the best conferences out there.
"Founders forum was set up to support global tech entrepreneurs and create a culture where structured serendipity thrives and entrepreneurs support each other."
For those of you who don’t know the two main products:
Paper, is an immersive drawing app for capturing ideas anywhere. Over 25 million people have found their creative space in Paper — sketching and writing hundreds of millions of ideas. As technology has advanced, Paper has been remade, continually measuring it against the question
“What is essential?”
Paste is FiftyThree’s answer for modern teams — a presentation tool that reflects their values and way of working combined with a unique perspective on essential tools. Paste is a collaborative way for you and your team to build ideas into compelling stories.
For what we are building out here in the US, this will mean that operationally we now have 3 locations — Los Angeles, New York and a bureaux in Seattle. Over the course of the next 4 months you’ll hopefully be hearing a lot more about how this relationship evolves and how we expand our offering
of beautifully obvious tools.
Once again this feels like Day 1 in the ever changing, ever developing evolution of WeTransfer.