Pressroom startup pr.co has announced a 400.000 euro investment from WoodWing Ventures. The money will be used to increase its marketing & sales efforts in Amsterdam and the UK.
During a ‘relaunch party‘ earlier this year, the company already announced the launch of new products.
The funding also got pr.co the IP of a small machine learning startup – and one of the developers was ‘acqui-hired’, CEO Stefan Fountain told StartupJuncture.
PR.co funding
It’s the first time the startup has needed external money. Therefore pr.co calls this investment a ‘late seed’. Woodwing Ventures usually invests in early stage companies.
“Literally any company needing to market itself, can use pr.co to finely tune their message to the correct audience, automate workflows and improve overall communication efficiency”, said Brian Reaves, lead angel investor – who is also in the supervisory board of the startup.
The VC based in Zaandam previously invested in well-known startups like Tiqets, Revue, Sowiso and in a web/mobile batch from Rockstart.
Press and PR startups
Pr.co is well-known in the Dutch startup scene, mostly because several accelerators offer their services to their startups. “With the investment, pr.co is also able to offer more services to big companies and multinationals”, CEO Stefan Fountain said in the press release.
The attention for startup PR is possibly at its peak. The company moves in a crowded market in The Netherlands, with Smart.pr as a well-know competitor and PressPage recently got funded as well.
History
Pr.co was founded in 2009 as Pressdoc and as a subsidiary from The Next Web. In 2013 the startup was rebranded as ‘pr.co’ and in 2014 a new management structure was added. Now it has cut its ties with The Next Web (but still in the same office – TQ) and now is a standalone company.
Image: drawing by Katja Fred, out of the pr.co e-book ‘Purpose’