beBee is a social network founded by serial-entrepreneurs Javier Cámara Rica and Juan Imaz. The site was created to fill a gap in the social network market, allowing people to network through common interests, uniting their personal and professional lives in one place. Founders call this concept affinity networking.
The startup was established in February 2015, and oringinally launched in English, Spanish and Portuguese before adding French, Italian, German, and Russian in 2016. beBee has more than 11 million users and is aiming towards having 40 million users by 2018.
In August 2016 beBee was listed selected as a possible Unicorn startups, due to its potential to become a technological giant. Other examples of startups that were considered unicorns are Uber, Spotify or AirBnb.
General Vision
editbeBee has a job offers section. Each bee (user) belongs to one or more hives (groups), which can be professional or personal.
The social network has an on-site publishing tool for blogging which is called beBee Producer. Users can write long articles with this blogging tool and share their posts among the community of users in various hives.
beBee has also launched its beBee Ambassadors program, meant to hand out shares to its most active and engaged users. The shares can be cashed in once the company goes public or is bought privately by a third party.
USA Market
In July 2016 beBee opened up a new office on 25th Broadway, in New York City.
History
editMixmail.com was a Spain-based email server founded in 1997, that was sold to Jazztel Internet Factory Ya.com. After selling Mixmail.com, the team created Canalmail, which changed its name to MediaResponse in 2000.
The same team later created Red Trabajar, another Spain-based company, dedicated to job searching by professional fields. Red Trabajar was present in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Portugal, Peru and Venezuela. In 2015, with over 6 millions users around the world, Red Trabajar reinvented its brand and launched the affinity-based social network, beBee.com.