Business Angel Seedfund will invest in the recently launched community portal, JakLeci.pl (www.jakleci.pl). The website, which helps people living in the same neighbourhood communicate with one another, is one of the fastest growing Internet communities – during 4 months of its existence, over 100,000 users have registered. It is visited by over 250,000 users per month.

“Nasza-klasa helps people who attended the same school to find each another. I thought it would be an equally good idea to create a communication platform for people who live in the same neighbourhood – a town or a district,” explains Wojciech Wietecha, the inventor of JakLeci.pl. “It turned out, I was right. On some days, as many as 1,000 people register at JakLeci.pl”.

JakLeci.pl is a unique platform, which allows people living in the same town or district to communicate; there is no charge for its use. Registered users gain access to information on local events (parties, premieres, etc.) and are able to find people with similar interests.

“We decided to rely on maximum user participation right from the beginning,” says Wojciech Wietecha. “Many of them are eager to participate in discussions about new ideas for JakLeci.pl. We would like our users to join us in developing the website.”

Functionality offered by JakLeci.pl includes the creation of photo galleries without size limits, the creation of interest groups and forums, inclusion of films from YouTube and an internal mail system. The website was the first in Poland to enable “thumbtacking” of pictures, that is, marking individual persons on uploaded photos and linking them to profiles of friends. Another innovative solution featured by JakLeci.pl is an internal messaging system, which makes it easier to hold “live” conversations.

“Our strategy assumes a constant enrichment of functionality. This brings measurable benefits; users spend more and more time viewing our pages,” says Wojciech Wietecha. “The average time spent by users on our website has increased twofold over the last two months. The total monthly number of page views is now almost 8 million.”

An investment by Business Angel Seedfund led to the creation of JakLeci.pl Sp. z o.o., a company managed by Wojciech Wietecha, the original author of the idea. The money will be used to finance the growth of JakLeci.pl over a period of two years.

“Our eventual business model assumes that revenues will come from several sources,” said Tomasz Woźniak, member of the board of Business Angel Seedfund responsible for investments in Internet-based ventures. “We are convinced that at the current growth rate, JakLeci.pl will quickly start to generate profits.”

Wojciech Wietecha, the creator of the website, was born in Jasło (Podkarpackie) and is currently living in the USA. He graduated in computer science in Chicago and has many years of experience in Internet-related projects under his belt. For the last 6 years he has been programme director at a large software company.