SkySQL Raises €3 Million Series A Round
SkySQL a Finnish provider of affordable MySQL & MariaDB database solutions, has announced that it has raised $4 million (€3 million) in Series A investments. The funding round was led by Finnish Industry Investments Ltd. (a government-own venture capital company), as well as Spintop Ventures, Open Ocean Capital, and U.S.-based OnCorps.
SkySQL serves customers such as ATOS Worldline, Canal+, Deutsche Telekom, ClubMed, Lotte.com, La Poste, Constant Contact and Virgin Mobile, and has operations in Asia, Europe, and North America. The company provides products and support for both enterprise and cloud architecture, and one of its selling points is having original talent from MySQL AB.
Finnish Open Ocean Capital Invests In A $5 Million Round To Commerce Guys
Finnish VC firm Open Ocean Capital has taken part in investing to a French company, Commerce Guys. The size of the round is $5 million in total and other investors that participated include Alven Capital and ISAI, the French entrepreneurs' fund. Commerce Guys are the creators of Drupal Commerce, one of the leading eCommerce solutions working with Drupal. Commerce Guys looks to serve internet merchants by helping them leverage the Drupal platform for their online stores. Open Ocean Capital is famous for supporting companies building value on top of open source projects, for example the likes of Drupal.
Open Ocean Invests In Zentyal
Open Ocean Capital, a Finnish VC firm, has invested $1 million in Zentyal, a developer of the Linux based Small Business Server. Open Ocean closed a $40 million fund in may, and gravitates towards open source projects due to their background with MySQL. Zentyal is based in Spain, and the startup says it is now at more than 30,000 monthly downloads, three years after its founding.
Open Ocean Capital Closes Fund Three Worth 40M Euro
Open Ocean Capital, founded by some of the individuals that invested into MySQL before it was later sold to Sun MIcrosystems, has raised its third fund - Fund Three. The amount was reached in the first closing. Open Ocean Capital looks to use the funds to invest into startups in "Europe and beyond", pretty much meaning there is no geographical restrictions on those who can apply.
Monty Strikes Again And Invests In MoiPal
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.
