This article was published on February 17, 2009

More Money for Dutch Startups. Virtual World Raises $4 Million.


More Money for Dutch Startups. Virtual World Raises $4 Million.

gf_3If there’s one country which seems to have continued to push investment into technology startups recently, its The Netherlands. Only last month eFresh.com, a b2b trading portal sealed funding totally 4.25 million EURO and this month it’s innovative virtual world startup Virtual Fairground with a respectful $4 million dollars. According to VentureBeat the funds have been raised from one undisclosed Angel Investor.

Founded in January 2008, the Amsterdam/Kiev based startup is focused on creating a browser based flash virtual world on French animated TV series Galactik Football. Galactic Football is a cartoon animation which tracks the “Snow Kids”, a football team from the planet Akillian, as they try to win their own version of the World Cup – the Galactik Football Cup. First phase of the product is to be made available in April 2009 in North America and Europe – with a full launch of the virtual word to fall in line with the next real life World Cup in 2010.

Co-Founder Maarten Brands told Virtual Worlds News recently that the funding was initially raised in mid 2008, however the company wanted to keep their startup quiet until now. Brands also told the site that it plans to use the funding for another project aside from Galactik Football, with an announcement to made soon.

Although $4 million may seem a substantial amount of funding for a new startup, Brands has been quoted as saying:

“We’re still looking around for an extra VC or strategic partner, but not very actively,” Brands said in an email. “The first investor commitment can take us to profitability, but there are a number of licensing opportunities still out there that we’re interested in and if we pick those up, we’d need extra capital.

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