I’ve been using Web of Trust’s (WOT later) Firefox plugin for a while now and I have to say it has become extremely useful in my day-to-day usage. There are some interesting reasons behind it and I thought I should discuss this with our readers. WOT is a service we’ve blogged on ArcticStartup a few times and the previous mention was Monty’s investment into the company.
I decided to take their Firefox plugin into use sometime back to see if it was any good. Today, it has become an inseparable part of my web surfing experience. I see a lot of potential in the company and the direction it is headed. Why is it so? Let me explain.
Continue reading »
Monty Widenius, one of the founders of MySQL whom later made a successful $1B exit, has invested through Open Ocean Capital to MoiPal – Ironstar Helsinki’s social gaming world. We previously told Monty investing into Against Intuition.
“I am excited to invest in the MoiPal world and help it grow even faster in the future”, says Monty. “I have always been interested in virtual worlds and seen how the communities around them continue to grow. The thing that really stands out to me with MoiPal, is the way it combines the social networking aspects similar to Facebook, with the caring of your online character, like you do with Tamagotchis or in games like Sims. I am looking forward to adding educational aspects into the game, so that players learn useful things while they play. When you combine this with open interfaces and engage developers out there to expand our world in their own directions, I think we can achieve something really Great!”
“We are thrilled to have Monty on board”, says Joakim Achrén, founder of Ironstar Helsinki. “The investment will give us a stable ground for growing MoiPal to the top league.” With such strong words from the founder – it can be argued that the investment is in the seven-figures, even though it is not disclosed.
MoiPal has gathered some 120 000 members during its first year of operations. The company has some interesting innovation in the pipeline as well, they are adding open API’s for developers to leverage on the sprites in the game as well an Open Social Application approach so anyone can participate in extending the virtual world.
It seems that during the last 12 months we’ve reported on a lot more investments from well known investors than during the boom times. Congrats to the MoiPal team for scoring an excellent investment and a resource that Monty definitely is.
Esa Suurio, one of the guys behind Web of Trust or WOT being developed by Against Intuition, tweeted about Michael “Monty” Widenius’ investment into their company. Web of Trust produces a browser addon that keeps you acknowledged of unsafe websites, online scams, spyware, etc. The service works in a crowdsourced manner where by other web users rate websites and let other webusers know of unsafe web destinations. Esa Saario also told in his tweet that the addon has now been downloaded more than 3 million times.
Monty Widenius is one of the founders behind MySQL. He sold the company in January 2008 to SUN Microsystems for a billion dollars. It is one of the all time success stories of Nordic technology startups. Monty invested through his Open Ocean -venture company. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but he will be taking a board of directors’ seat with the investment. WOT does not disclose how the money will be spent.
Biovakka Suomi Oy 
Bitbar
