SimpleSite in brief
SimpleSite was founded in 2003. The company offers a user-friendly website builder in a premium
SaaS business model.
Target segment
The target segment is private individuals and owners of small businesses who use the service to maintain their own company or special-interest websites. Two-thirds of all premium subscribers have websites under their own domain names.
Internationalisation
In recent years, SimpleSite has pursued a focused internationalisation strategy and is now present in 24 markets world-wide (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France,
Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the US, Canada, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Malaysia, Russia, Greece, Portugal, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil). In addition our
English, French and Spanish websites are being marketed in Africa, Asia and South America.
Employees
Development and Customer Service are based in Copenhagen, Denmark, where 16 people are employed. In addition, SimpleSite has five employees elsewhere in Europe, as well as eighteen student assistants of the relevant nationalities to handle the local Customer Service functions in the individual markets.
Sales and partnerships
The service is marketed via SEO, SEM and a substantial number of partnerships with marketing partners. On a Scandinavian and European level, the company has approximately 350 marketing partners, including Bonnier, MetroXpress, Spray and Nettavisen. Via this collaboration, these partners achieve extra income flows by offering their users the opportunity to create websites in their own names.
Turnover and customers
In 2012, SimpleSite achieved a turnover of EUR 4.5 million which is a growth of 22% compared to
2011.
Today the company has around 70,000 paying subscribers. Around half of these are based outside
Denmark, and the total ratio of international subscribers is expected to grow rapidly as the company continues to pursue its internationalisation strategy. More than 80% of all new subscriptions are international.
The future
SimpleSite will continue its steadily accelerating international growth in a growing number of markets in 2013 and 2014. In 2012 the founder of Jobindex, Kaare Danielsen invested EUR 1.74 million in SimpleSite to fund the growth strategy.
The founders
SimpleSite was founded by the brothers Morten Elk and Jacob Elk. The brothers are also coowners of the Danish portal Jubii, which was returned to Danish ownership from German Lycos at
1

the end of 2008. Morten is an investor in the Danish start-up file-sharing service www.ge.tt
. In the 1990s, Morten and Jacob were behind the ELK web agency, which was sold in 1999 and is now part of the digital agency Creuna.
The CTO (Thomas Petersen) and CSO (Sebastian Engelbrecht) have both been involved in the
Internet industry since 1997 and are co-owners of the company.
35.000
30.000
25.000
20.000
15.000
10.000
5.000
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Turnover
4.000
3.000
2.000
1.000
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
-1.000
-2.000
-3.000
Pre-tax PL
2