Amsterdam-based community engagement platform Insided announced a 6 million euro series A investment round, led by French venture capital fund Ventech, together with Belgian VC Fortino Capital and Dutch VC HenQ.

“Insided provides a way for businesses to connect at large scale with their customers, and empowers these customers to interact efficiently amongst each other and with brands”, said Duco Sickinghe, partner at Fortino Capital in a release.

Customers can ask questions, find answers, co-create, share experiences and provide reviews on products and services – all on the owned digital channels. The platform offers deep business integrations with systems like CRM and analytics.

According to Coen van Duiven, partner at HenQ, the investment will be used to support their international strategy as well as increasing the speed of product innovation. In 2016 Insided is aiming to hire fifty to hundred new people. Right now more than sixty employees work for the company.

Grow fast, win big

In a Medium post by Robin van Lieshout and Wouter Neyndorff, both founders say they realized they needed to grow fast if they want to keep their strong position in Europe (last year they expanded to France, Germany, Ireland, Finland and Spain). It could be done without an investment, but slow, or with an investment, and fast.

“The alternative was to grow with less velocity. But that might not be not fast enough, meaning we lose momentum to capture the market. And we want to win. And win big. (…) And now, we have extra cash to execute.”