About Transloadit
Transloadit is an MPaaS (Media Processing as a Service) for developers. Companies integrate with us to automate workflows of video encoding, image resizing, and much more.
Transloadit was bootstrapped in 2009 by three engineers hailing from Berlin and Amsterdam.
Since we met through open source and had to work remotely from day one, these things are deeply ingrained as values in our company’s culture and DNA. To this day, we are remote-only, and 80% of our revenue is spent on open source development and fostering its communities. Our open source projects (Tus and Uppy) are changing how the world does file uploading.
As a teammate, you’ll find that open, remote, friendly, and curious are words that describe our company’s culture well. Much of our focus is on employee satisfaction. As we see it, this is what allows us to create the best products. Along with our guiding principles of secure, robust, performant, and versatile, this has paid off in uptime and customer satisfaction over the past twelve years.
But we always strive to be better. So, together with 17 Transloadians, we work relentlessly to grow, nurture, and mature our company and the value it can bring into this world. Here are some of the milestone achievements that are particularly dear to us:
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January 2008
Debuggable Ltd is founded
Tim and Felix found Debuggable, a web consultancy in Berlin. They both become core contributors and active community members to CakePHP. Three months later, Felix meets Kevin (who lives a six-hour train ride away in Amsterdam) through his open source project Locutus. The idea for Transloadit is kicked around via email before we decide the three of us should team up.
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January 2009
The first commit
The first actual code hits our API2 repository on GitHub.
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July 2009
Founders meet IRL
We brainstorm about things like authentication and our tagline. We also play Fork Master and Kevin is introduced to Club Mate, the "famous", heavily-caffeinated beverage from Berlin.
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August 2009
First paying customer
On August 28, we become a real company by having the first paying user account sign up. Mariano from Workana is a customer to this day
You can claim your ten-year-old bottle of wine, Mariano!
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December 2010
Realtime encoding is launched
This feature is an 🥇 industry first and gets coverage on the AWS blog. Being among, or maybe the actual first to run Node.js in production was risky, but paid off in the end.
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May 2012
We're now ramen profitable
This means we could live off of Transloadit if we'd be okay with a diet of ramen noodles.
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June 2012
Transloadit Ltd is founded
We found a new company and each own a third: Transloadit Ltd. So far, we had been running the service as a product under the flag of Debuggable Ltd.
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July 2012
Coursera becomes a customer
Coursera is a MOOC provider, making university courses available online for free. They use Transloadit to process the digital assets. With their large batch imports and valuable feedback, they help launch us to a next level.
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April 2013
We start tus.io
Fed up with reports of broken uploads and HTTP only caring about resumability of downloads, we take the first swing at an open protocol for resumable file uploads
(an 🥇 industry first) . -
April 2014
MTV Europe becomes a customer
Besides significant traffic, this name gave us the credibility that allowed us to reel in new customers.
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July 2014
Revenue nearly doubles
We no longer need to do consultancy work on the side. Kevin and Tim now both work fulltime on Transloadit. Felix left the company three months earlier and started consulting for Apple.
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May 2015
The New York Times becomes a customer
Their name and logo add credibility to our service. They also challenge us to thoroughly review (and improve) our legal framework.
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October 2015
We start Uppy
Initially, we thought to build a proprietary uploader and posted a job ad for it. We then decided that this project needed to be open source and announced Uppy eight months later.
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November 2015
We hire our tenth Transloadian
Our new recruits for the Uppy projects push the counter into double digits.
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March 2016
First global team meetup
We fly folks from all over the world to Amsterdam and have a blast.
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July 2017
Uppy becomes ridiculously robust
During our second global team meetup in Berlin, we add a feature that lets Uppy recover from unstable networks (tus powered) and browser crashes (an 🥇 industry first). It's big on Reddit 1 2 3.
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December 2017
We start a newsletter
We call it The Dev Times and each month, it brings you three general dev and two Transloadit updates.
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February 2018
tus gets traction
After launching 1.0, Cloudflare and Vimeo start using tus in production. Git LFS adopts tus as a transport.
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December 2018
We open a third datacenter in Singapore
After the US and EU, we open a datacenter in Singapore to reduce latencies and become a viable encoding engine to power businesses in Asia.
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March 2019
Transloadit GmbH is founded
Weary of the possibility of a hard brexit and its potential dire consequences, we flee the UK. Transloadit continues on as a German limited liability company.
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April 2019
Uppy hits 1.0
The launch is well received and gets love on Hacker News, Reddit 1 2 3 4, Smashingmag, Product Hunt and Javascript Daily. It also reaches
20k+ stars on GitHub.
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August 2019
GitHub announces partnership with Transloadit
We’re among the first 50 companies that GitHub partners with to provide students free service through the GitHub Student Developer Pack. We're offering our Startup Plan for free to students enrolled in the Pack.
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August 2019
Our 10th birthday
What is the birthday of a company? First idea? First founder meetup? First commit? Registry date of a legal entity? In our minds, we became a real company when we got our first paying customer, which is August 28, 2009
Transloadit: a Swiss Army Knife for files
Transloadit has a lot to offer. Unique to Transloadit is its wide array of features, and their LEGO-like composability. A few examples:
Input
File importing
Process
Video encoding
Audio encoding
Artificial intelligence
Document processing
Output
File exporting
The Transloadit Team
Transloadit is brought to you by a small team of full-time developers and supported by a widespread network of passionate experts and freelancers. Please meet our team, in order of appearance:
Team
Kevin van Zonneveld — Co-founder
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Before co-founding Transloadit, Kevin worked as the research & development lead for a hosting company in Amsterdam. In that capacity, he was in charge of automating business and sysadmin efforts. He also designed web infrastructure for its customers. His expertise on scalability was put to good use in the construction of Transloadit's highly available platform. Kevin continues to improve our back-end as we expand and also loves to engage in product development and innovation. You can check out his blog where he likes to muse about coding and distributed systems.
Tim Koschützki — Co-founder
Berlin, Germany
Tim is a skilled programmer with close to 20 years of web and application development experience. Halfway through his career, he became a core contributor to the CakePHP framework. He wears many hats here at Transloadit. This includes working on our API services, Robots and scaling algorithms, super-vising customer support, handling customer billing, and much more. Tim has a passion for German Engineeringâ„¢, which is reflected clearly in his work for Transloadit and his open source projects.
Marius Kleidl — Back-end developer
Passau, Germany
Marius is a gifted young developer, who has been taking on some big challenges for us here at Transloadit. His latest projects include tus.io and the development of our Go SDK. He has also done extensive research on how to best utilize containers in our next-gen application stack. Marius is as thorough in his work as he is quick in picking up new technology. He can also often be found engaging with our customers to see how he can help them to best enjoy their Transloadit experience.
A.J. van Loon — Writer and editor
Leiden, The Netherlands
A.J. obtained a Master’s degree cum laude in Ancient History from Leiden University, specializing in Ancient Egyptian Criminal Law. He has a great love for languages – ancient and modern alike – and has bilingual proficiency in Dutch and English. A.J. currently works as a freelance writer and translator under his own company, Aemulans Writing and Editing. Besides that, he also runs a thesis correction and editing service called Scriptieman. At Transloadit, A.J. makes sure that everything we share with the outside world, be it through our website or any other medium, is able to meet the highest standard.
Artur Paikin — Front-end developer and Interface designer
New York, USA
Artur is a web designer & developer, who enjoys having a good meal out on his balcony or at a park. He likes to experiment with growing food and is often working on his home automation robot, which also serves as a playground for picking up new technologies such as React. Artur is a traveler at heart and regularly writes about his adventures. He is a coffee aficionado and runs an occasional pop-up coffee shop that you might enjoy. For Transloadit, Artur is primarily working on Uppy, our next generation open source file uploader for web browsers.
Abdelhadi Khiati — Developer and Support captain
Oran, Algeria
Abdel is currently taking his Master’s degree in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. A late start notwithstanding – he only had his first PC at age 16 and first discovered the internet at 18 – Abdel has shown great passion and an apt mind for computer sciences. He already has ample experience developing and writing various kinds of software, from web APIs to robotics software, and is currently partaking in Google Summer Of Code, where he is working on the FreeBSD kernel. Abdel also curates the awesome robotics list.
Alexander Zaytsev — Designer
Dnipro, Ukraine
Alexander is a designer with a passion for showing information in the most clear and accessible way. He loves making beautiful interfaces and writing HTML and CSS. He is fascinated by everything concerning public transportation and enjoys working on design projects related to this topic. Show Alex something done badly and he will be itching to improve it. Take the old tram network map of his hometown Dnipropetrovsk, for instance. Alex completely redesigned it and his version is now in official use.
Renée Kooi — Developer
Groningen, The Netherlands
Renée is a talented developer who loves free software almost as much as they enjoy a good K-Pop song. They are one of the developers behind üWave, a collaborative listening platform that allows groups to create playlists in a democratic fashion. Renée likes to wind down by playing a few games of Age of Empires II and is also very active in the community that still surrounds this timeless RTS classic, most notably by writing programs that can analyze all the details of your recorded matches. At Transloadit, Renée has been an invaluable asset to the Uppy project and continues to work on its further development.
Edgar Conejo — Content writer & designer
Valencia, Spain
Edgar is an HTML guy who has a knack for design and photography, as well as a thirst for new technology and delicious craft beers. He was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica, then got happily married and moved to the beautiful city of Valencia, Spain. For Transloadit, Edgar is the powerhouse behind our monthly newsletter: The Dev Times.
Peter Assentorp — Designer
Copenhagen, Denmark
Peter is a self-taught designer & frontend developer who started building websites some twenty years ago. The first was for his own Counter-Strike clan, but other projects from friends and online acquaintances soon followed. This experience eventually landed him a position as a web designer with a small agency. After having worked in the employ of various companies for many years, Peter now performs his craft as a freelancer. Besides working on web design, Peter also runs Sportmonda.com, a small startup that sells custom football kits, and a project called SocialSizes.io offering designers sizes and templates for most popular social networks. In his spare time, Peter likes to play football (soccer) and computer games (CS:GO).
Julian Gruber — Back-end Developer
Munich, Germany
Julian is a Programmer residing in southern Germany, who besides simple and beautiful products, loves reading and the occasional meditation. He also plays the guitar in his Black Metal band, which is called Super Satan. It is said his hobbies include knitting and base jumping – but who can really say with a guy like Julian. In the past, Julian has worked for various Silicon Valley startups. Here at Transloadit, he is fulfilling his childhood dream of finally building some really cool and advanced robots. Beep boop!
Mikael Finstad — Developer
Norway
Mikael is a software creator and consultant from Oslo, Norway. His love of making new things is rooted in the strong belief that software should be available to everyone. In his continued quest to improve the selection and quality of open source apps out there, he has already created various cool projects like LosslessCut, editly, and SimpleInstaBot. Apart from being a creative force on the digital plane, Mikael is also an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hiking, exploring and photographing the wonderful world around us. Check out his website for some of his amazing work. At Transloadit, Mikael works on modernizing our JS stack and adding many awesome features.
Joseph Grabski — Content Lead
Rochester, United Kingdom
Joseph is an indie game developer and student from Rochester, England, who is currently in the process of completing a degree in Computer Science. He occasionally participates in game jams where contestants have limited time to build a game from scratch. Check out some of his projects on his itch.io creator page. When Joseph is not creating games, you can find him playing the guitar, bass, and piano, tinkering with his music or obsessing over guitar pedals. He also never misses a chance to play CS:GO with his friends and humiliate them with his superior skills. As part of our dedicated support team, Joseph is constantly looking for ways to help Transloadit's customers reach their goals.
Antoine du Hamel — Developer
France
Antoine is a Software Engineer from La Rochelle, France. His love for everything open source brought him to GitHub at an early age, and he has been a regular visitor and contributor ever since. He also serves as a member of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee, the esteemed governing body that oversees the popular runtime environment. When Antoine is not channeling his creative energy into technical projects, he enjoys honing his musical skills behind the piano. At Transloadit, Antoine focuses on modernizing the JS code base and developing new features for Uppy.
Florian Künzig — Developer
Mittweida, Germany
Florian is a man of many talents and interests. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology, he is currently studying General and Digital Forensics and aims to follow it up with a Master in Bioinformatics or IT Security. When he is not busy pumping information into his massive brain, Florian likes to clear his head by going for a run or skiing down a snowy slope. He is also an avid Trekkie 
At Transloadit, Florian is working on Java SDK development and helps out our customers as member of the support team.
Merlijn Vos — Developer
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Merlijn is a user-centric web designer specialized in front-end development with a degree in Communications & Multi Media Design. He’s passionate about ethical engineering; making the web accessible for everyone, applying progressive enhancement, and using custom linters to catch insensitive, inconsiderate writing. Merlijn’s endless curiosity pushes him to always keep learning more. In his spare time, he helps maintain the open source unified ecosystem as a core team member and he also enjoys a good game of chess. At Transloadit, Merlijn is part of the Uppy team, but he lends a hand on the back-end side of things whenever he can.
Yukesh Shrestha — Support Engineer
Gillingham, United Kingdom
Yukesh is a university student who is currently working on his degree in Computer Science. As a bright young mind interested in all things tech, he is itching to learn all he can. Yukesh has a particular interest in creating apps, ranging from fairly simple to more advanced. Keep an eye out for his latest creations! In his spare time, he enjoys competing with and against his friends across a wide variety of games. As one of our Support Engineers, Yukesh could be the one responding to your ticket and trying to solve any problems your users are facing.
Alumni
Felix Geisendörfer — Co-founder
Berlin, Germany
Although he is by now an emeritus, Felix's contributions to Transloadit will continue to be felt for years to come. From 2009 until his departure in 2013, Felix was instrumental in taking what was merely a budding idea in our heads and transforming it into a profitable startup. He was one of the first contributors to Node.js and continues to work on various other open source projects. Felix is currently working as a contractor, developing software in Go. He remains involved with our team as an advisor and friend.
Fahad Ibnay Heylaal — Front-end developer
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Fahad is the creator of Croogo, a member of Bower team and developer at True. In his spare time, he is helping to improve Transloadit's front-end. Passionate about CSS and JavaScript, he has been a rejuvenating influence on everything pertaining to the user interface of Transloadit and tus.io. Fahad is always eager to experiment with the latest technologies to produce great experiences for our users. When we need smooth, we turn to Fahad.
