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May 1998
The founders meet in a lecture
A computer science lecture at the University of Würzburg brought Stefan Weber, Michael Reinicke and Matthias Siedler together for the very first time. Under the strict eye of Prof. Thomemeet, the three students forged a friendship that would change their lives.
June 1999
Launch of wuewowas.de
Their first project together, wuewowas.de, was strongly influenced by the interests of the three student founders, namely: reading, riding and clubbing. Uh, did I mention clubbing? Although, financially, the site was a bit of a disaster, the online entertainment calendar still exists today as a popular go-to site for the students of Würzburg.
April 2000
Carpooling service offered online
It all began as a simple plan to reduce the travel costs for students wanting to go home for the weekend. Three students with no money, their sophisticated marketing plan involved heading to the student cafeteria at lunchtime to distribute flyers with links to online carpools. Who knew hungry students would be such an easy target?
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April 2001
Birth of mitfahrgelegenheit.de
The fact that the carpooling site worked so well was not really surprising given that no one else had made much of an effort in this area before. But the three students wanted to do even better. They decided to launch the national carpooling site; mitfahrgelegenheit.de. And then, like a fart in the bathtub and just as unpleasant, the dot-com bubble burst.
April 2002
Their first office
Previously, all business had been conducted in the over-crowded university computer room. But now they had begun to earn real money. Well, enough money for a backyard office with 10 square meters and even a toilet on the corridor! Who needs heating anyway?
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March 2004
Server too busy!
The server crashed and burned like a Tim Allen movie. Like a Wall Street hedge fund. Like Lindsay Lohann on a joyride. The users were increasing and the site was getting slower. We needed a second server. Who ever would have thought it?
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May 2005
Hooray, we’re the biggest!
It was like any start-up fairytale: a young company that completely changed old habits. In the past, journeys were organized over dimly lit counters at railway and bus stations. Then the Internet came and, suddenly, with a few clicks anyone could decide their route and manner of travel at competitive prices. Mitfahrgelegenheit.de now managed a database of more than 100,000 trips ... and all for free!
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June 2007
10,000 customer service emails
With more users comes more responsibility. And a mountain of work. “I forgot my keys in the driver’s car”, "I removed this offer but I still get requests from passengers", "Greetings from Namibia”. We needed customer service staff and we needed them urgently.
December 2007
Michael and Stefan quit their “real” jobs
To earn their daily bread, Michael and Matthias had continued to work at the university while Stefan had taken advantage of paid leave, salary increases and (ahem, cough, cough) sick days at Yahoo! By now, their site had become a big plate of unruly “spaghetti code”. It was time to do something about it. If their lives had been an episode of Baywatch, this would be the rescue scene.
September 2008
We discover Europe
Luckily, the highways don’t stop at the German border. In 2008, we launched the mitfahrgelegenheit.ch and .at sites for Switzerland and Austria. Then, in 2009, with the help of our Greek friend Eleni, pamemazi.gr was born. This was followed in 2010 by the launches of carpooling.pl, passaggio.it, envoiture.fr, carpooling.co.uk and carpooling.es with the respective help of Justyna, Daniela, Odile, Simon and Juan. Vive l'Europe!
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April 2009
The first employees!
Tobias and Veit were the first paid-employees. Before that everyone worked for the same reasons as the founders: idealism, desire to improve the world and utter madness.
July 2009
We find new friends
mitfahrgelegenheit.de becomes a serious player in Germany with a completely free service for both drivers and passengers. Thanks to the support of our new partners, ADAC, we launched the Mitfahrclub ADAC on the 23/07/2009. They believed in our idea and helped to develop it further. Thank you!
March 2010
The volcano gives us a boost!
We always wonder what caused the shutdown of air traffic: the ashes or the inability of air traffic controllers to properly pronounce the word "Eyjafjallajökull". What is certain is that traffic on our platforms, suddenly increased by 30%. In the face of strikes, people took to their cars, offering rides to others who were stranded.
June 2010
We are getting better and better and better
With the Internet, there is simply no respite. Users continued to have good ideas, suggestions for improvements and advice. They urgently called for greater commitment and the ability to evaluate drivers or passenges. Thus, the booking and evaluation system was launched on the 16.06.2010. Then we launched a Facebook application on the 18.11.2010, followed by an iPhone application in January 2011. After that, more and more people wanted to compare all the means of transport to ascertain the fastest and cheapest way to get from A to B. Accordingly, in February 2011, the site began to offer partner trips by train, bus and plane. Hats off to our developers!
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October 2011
A new era begins!
In 1950s, a liter of gasoline cost 25 cents, the highway was the road to freedom and when we heard the term "global warming", we thought about "vegetables". Today, we think of climate change, we travel the information highway and we like to share: good ideas, videos and nice cars. In the ten years of our company’s existence we have come very far and have consistently changed and evolved our offering. We look forward to the next ten years. See you there!