Tobias Balling is a co-founder of Blinkist. He started the Berlin company in 2012 with Holger Seim, Niklas Jansen and Sebastian Klein. Seim became CEO.
Blinkist 1.0 launched in 2012 and the public launch followed in 2013. The first two years were hard, with money trouble, low downloads and product problems.
Investors later included Insight Venture Partners, Greycroft and Headline. In 2018 the company raised $18.8 million.
In May 2023 Go1 acquired Blinkist, which was privately held until then.