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Johannes Dancker
Co-founder · Formbricks
Open-source surveys Experience management
Dancker co-founded Formbricks, an open-source survey and experience management platform that more than 15,000 teams use and that some organizations run in place of Qualtrics.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,” Johannes Dancker quoted in a 2023 post on how Formbricks found its focus. He co-founded the company, based in Kiel, Germany, whose open-source platform runs surveys and analyzes customer feedback on a company's own servers.
A Message From Mexico City
Dancker traces Formbricks to a WeWork in Mexico City, Mexico, where, he wrote, he “slid into Matti's DMs” after learning that Matti Nannt had built an open-source survey tool. The two decided to build a side project together.
snoopForms and the Pivot
Their first product was snoopForms, an open-source alternative to Typeform. Dancker wrote that it drew early traction and taught them “there is a latent need for an open-source standalone survey tool,” but that an open-source Typeform alone was not a good business.
After four months of full-time work on other ideas and a disappointing launch of a product-market-fit survey tool, the pair settled on open-source experience management, the focus Formbricks keeps today.
Formbricks Today
Formbricks GmbH says more than 15,000 teams use its software and that its GitHub project has more than 13,000 stars. The company holds ISO 27001 certification, and its customer stories include DigitalService, the German federal government's digital agency.
