GoalGorilla Re-brands As Open Social

Internet agency GoalGorilla says goodbye to the name under which it has been providing online services for eleven years in the Netherlands. GoalGorilla continues as Open Social after the product of the same name, which has now been internationally active for three years. With Open Social, companies and organizations can easily launch their own intranet, community or knowledge network. Open Social responds to the changing needs of organizations where direct contact between employees, customers and volunteers happens online. Organizations can no longer take the risk of investing in expensive IT projects. Now with Open Social, they can launch their platform in the cloud quickly and at low monthly costs; software-as-a-service or SaaS.

Deliver positive impact with community software

GoalGorilla acted as design, development and marketing partner for hundreds of online projects over the years and has always been active in the open-source Drupal community. The teams in Amsterdam, Enschede, and Lviv are now all working on Open Social. The first version of this community software originated from the Greenpeace Greenwire project that won the Dutch Interactive Awards (DIA) in 2015. This platform connects hundreds of thousands of volunteers across 16 countries with each other and in more than 20 languages. Volunteers organize activities online and share ideas, experiences and knowledge. “After winning the DIA award, the demand for the platform grew enormously. So large that we could not immediately meet the demand. This is how the idea for Open Social came about. A platform that can be launched quickly without programming or needing a lot of technical knowledge,” says Taco Potze, CEO of Open Social.

To realize the first version of the product, 151 investors invested €200,000 within ten days in early 2016 through a crowdfunding campaign. This laid the foundation for the online community product. It has undergone considerable development in recent years. Scandals around Facebook data breaches and strict European data privacy legislation make Open Social a reliable partner.

The software is now being used by nearly 1,000 organizations worldwide. In the Netherlands, among others, Victim Support and Milieudefensie make use of the software. Worldwide, the United Nations and Greenpeace International are among the client portfolio. This recognition and growth give Open Social the confidence to focus exclusively on the development of the software under their new name.

Further Reading

Open Social Features and Extensions
Watch our product video

New management team

Taco Potze becomes CEO of the company and is supported by Bram ten Hove, CTO within Open Social. Ten Hove has worked at GoalGorilla for eight years in the role of Lead Developer and is now taking on the responsibility of the technical team and the development of Open Social. GoalGorilla co-founder Mieszko Czyzyk continues with a startup focused on blockchain, a spin-off from work on Open Social.

“We keep the same great team of 20 employees in Enschede and Amsterdam. We have to remove some gorilla soft toys, gorilla paintings and gorilla statues here and there. But we never remove them completely. GoalGorilla has brought us to where we are now. We will not forget that either. So we will have our meeting rooms here and there reminded of the unforgettable gorilla time.” Says Bram ten Hove.