Almedia: The Meteoric Growth of a Teenager’s Advertising Startup
When most 17-year-olds are still finishing high school, Moritz Holländer was building a company that would soon rank among Europe’s fastest-growing businesses. Founded in 2020 in Berlin, Almedia began as a small experiment in digital advertising — a platform connecting brands with users through rewards-based engagement. Five years later, it’s generating over €100 million in annual revenue , entirely bootstrapped, with no outside investors.
At the heart of Almedia’s success is Freecash , a gamified rewards platform where users complete missions, play games, or take surveys to earn gift cards from brands like Netflix or Amazon. For advertisers, it’s a powerful acquisition engine that converts user attention into measurable performance. The model sits at the intersection of advertising, gaming, and fintech , a sweet spot that has helped Almedia attract more than 50 million users globally.
In 2025, the company’s growth story reached new heights when the Financial Times ranked it Europe’s third fastest-growing company — and the number one in advertising — with nearly 19,000% growth over three years. That same year, Almedia acquired the German cashback platform zave.itDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → , signaling ambitions beyond mobile engagement and into retail and commerce.
Still privately owned and employing around 140 people, Almedia represents a rare startup archetype in today’s venture-driven tech landscape — a young, profitable, founder-led company scaling at breakneck speed without a single euro of VC capital. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the next breakout European tech story can start not in a boardroom, but in a teenager’s idea of how the internet could reward people differently.
Source:
A.M.
