StatusNet Raises New Round of Investment Led by FirstMark Capital

MONTREAL, Aug. 3, 2010 – StatusNet Inc., the company behind the open source microblogging server StatusNet™, has taken on additional investment led by New York-based FirstMark Capital joined by BOLDstart Ventures, iNovia Capital and Montreal Start Up. The round brings StatusNet's total investment to date to $2.3 million. Founder of open source ad platform, OpenX, angel investor and FirstMark Capital venture partner Scott Switzer will join the StatusNet board.

 “We're building an enterprise sales and support team to further push StatusNet software into the Global 1000 market,” says Evan Prodromou, Founder and CEO of StatusNet. “Our investors and partners have deep experience in enterprise and open source software that will help us during our next phase of growth.”

 StatusNet is a popular microblogging solution for Fortune 1,000 companies who want to encourage secure employee communication and collaboration inside the corporate firewall. StatusNet provides a commercial support subscription for its software, the StatusNet Enterprise Network™, and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, the StatusNet Cloud Service™.

 “We see more and more companies using microblogging in the enterprise, and it is likely that social networking software will replace email as the primary interpersonal communications as it already did for about 20 percent of users in the consumer space,” says Josko Bobjanovic of iNovia Capital. “The market opportunity for StatusNet couldn't be more clear.”

 “StatusNet provides an open, auditable system that is installable inside the firewall,” said Switzer. “This makes it the leader at the high end of the enterprise market. FirstMark Capital is excited to work with the team at StatusNet and will provide the market knowledge, relationships and guidance to set a course for growth.”

The company has seen tremendous interest for its product from a broad range of enterprise customers, including dozens of the world’s largest companies. StatusNet plug-ins can integrate with other enterprise applications, and gives companies a way to keep their mobile workforces connected. “StatusNet revolutionized our internal social communications,” shares Rami Levi, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at global communications leader Motorola.

“StatusNet shows the true power of open-source software in the enterprise,” said Ed Sim, Managing Partner of BOLDstart. “Large organizations love the flexibility of the product's plug-in architecture and client API. This investment will give additional resources to the company's recent development of dedicated desktop and mobile clients for StatusNet.”

About StatusNet

StatusNet Inc. develops and supports the Open Source microblogging tool by the same name. Founded in 2008, the company has offices in Montreal and San Francisco. Its products include the StatusNet Enterprise Network support subscription program and the StatusNet Cloud Service software-as-a-service offering.

About FirstMark Capital

Based in New York City, FirstMark Capital invests in ground-breaking companies that are creating new markets with innovative technology solutions or fundamentally changing existing markets by applying a fresh approach and new business model. A venture leader with nearly $2 billion in capital commitments, FirstMark's team of investment and operations professionals have decades of real-world experience and leadership in core technology markets, making the firm uniquely qualified to offer industry insight, relationships and the operational expertise to build lasting businesses. Select historical investments include: Netgear, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTGR); First Advantage Corp. (Acquired by First American Corporation; NASDAQ: FAF); StubHub, Inc (Acquired by eBay, Inc.; NASDAQ:EBAY); Netegrity, Inc. (Acquired by CA Inc; NASDAQ: CA); Flarion, Inc. (Acquired by Qualcomm, Inc; NASDAQ: QCOM); OutlookSoft Inc. (Acquired by SAP AG; NASDAQ: SAP); Vallent (Acquired by IBM; NASDAQ: IBM) and Navic (Acquired by Microsoft; NASDAQ: MSFT). Current investments include: SecondMarket, Riot Games, Dovetail, Knewton, Conductor, Clickable and Lumos Labs. For more information, please visit http://www.firstmarkcap.com.

About BOLDstart Ventures

BOLDstart Ventures is a New York-based, micro-VC fund that seeks to partner with and provide seed funding to bold entrepreneurs in the Internet, mobile, and cloud computing markets.  Founded by Ed Sim in partnership with lead investor Penny Black, we actively work with entrepreneurs to help them become the market leaders of tomorrow.  Ed Sim has been leading first round investments for over 15 years and financed many leading enterprises like Greenplum (sold to EMC), GoToMyPC (sold to Citrix), 24/7 Media (public and sold to WPP Group), LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN), Answers.com (Nasdaq: ANSW), and Gizmo5 (sold to Google).  

About Montreal Start Up

Montreal Startup is a micro VC fund investing in Montreal-based software and web startups. For more information, visit montrealstartup.com.

About Inovia Capital

iNovia provides venture capital to entrepreneurs who transform innovations into successful companies. The team is comprised of sector experts focused on Mobile, Consumer Internet, Internet Communications, Software and Digital Media. iNovia has $165M under management across two seed and early stage IT and Life Sciences funds. For more information, visit www.inoviacapital.com or follow iNovia on Twitter at http://twitter.com/iNovia.