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.
