Jalbum raises $3.2M in Series B funding
Jalbum Ab, Sweden based community for online photosharing, announced yesterday that they have closed a second round of investment with Nordic Venture Partners. This new deal brings the total raised capital up to 23 million SEK (approx $3.2M). In addition, the company’s board of directors named serial entrepreneur Andreas Sjölund as the new Chief Executive Officer of the company.
Sjölund is formerly known as co-creator of Skype and one of the first employees of KaZaA. Founder and former CEO David Ekholm will stay with the company and continue as a CTO.
Jalbum offers a mix of photo album software and social photo sharing. What separates Jalbum from other services like Flickr is that they have executable cross-platform client. Client enables the user to do basic photo editing, organizing and uploading photos. With the tool you can also design own or use some user created pre-existing skins for your album. Another appealing aspect is that you can publish your album where ever you like, not only on Jalbum.net.
Even though the downloadable clients have been regarded as somewhat painful practice, apparently it has worked for Jalbum. The client is now downloaded over two thousand times a day and over 24 million albums have been published with the software.
OpenCoffee Club Sweden
If you live or travel in Sweden, be sure to check out the local OpenCoffee events. At the moment there are ones in Stockholm, Göteborg/Gothenburg, Linköping, and Jönköping.
The next event is in Stockholm September 11th, and features Per von Zelowitz and Mark Johnson from Nordic Venture Partners.
NYX raises 5M euros from Nordic Venture Partners
The Swedish based NYX has raised 5 million euros from Nordic Venture Partners, according to alarm:clock euro. The company creates software for World Lottery Association and gaming operators. NYX interactive was founded in 2006.
Per von Zelowitz, partner of Nordic Venture Partners states in the press release: “With our long experience within the gaming and entertainment industry, and through our earlier and successful investment in this area e.g. Essnet Interactive, Funcom.com and PlayerX, we have learned that NYX Interactive not only has a tremendous technology and product portfolio. The Company also has been able to in a very short time, less than two years, established itself as a market leader and a next generation supplier in a interactive market.
There are a lot of companies in the casual gaming space, but NYX Interactive has taken a different strategy that has proved to be a very good decision so far.
