Holger Seim founded Blinkist with college friends Tobias Balling, Niklas Jansen and Sebastian Klein. The company was founded in Berlin on 21 August 2012, and Blinkist 1.0 launched the same year.
The first two years were hard. The team had little money, downloads were low and the product had problems. The format that worked was the Blink, a fifteen-minute summary of a non-fiction book that can be read or heard.
The public launch came in 2013. In 2018 Blinkist raised $18.8 million in a round led by Insight Venture Partners, with earlier backers including Greycroft, Headline, IBB and MGO. Competitors include Headway, getAbstract and Shortform.
In May 2023 Go1 acquired Blinkist.