Contentful Secures Seed Funds from Balderton and Point Nine Capital

Contentful, a new content management platform for web and mobile applications, has secured seed funding from Balderton Capital and Point Nine Capital. Contentful has also established a global advisory board of content and technology specialists including Alexander Bruehl, former partner at Atlas Capital; Francesco Cesarini, founder & technical director at Erlang Solutions; Daniel Heaf, chief digital officer at BBC Worldwide; Karen McGrane, CEO of Bond Art + Science; Todd Tran, head of advertising EMEA & APAC at Rovio and Michael Wolfe, serial entrepreneur and former EIR at Benchmark.

PRESS RELEASE

Contentful, a new content management platform for web and mobile applications, is launching its beta program today after securing seed funding from Balderton Capital and Point Nine Capital as well as assembling an expert Advisory Board.
With its API-first approach to content management, Contentful is the first cloud-based service to allow content to be distributed across any device, application, or platform, with one single input. Until now, content management systems have been developed for page-centric websites, but not to efficiently serve content to interactive applications.
Contentful has been built from the ground up to deliver content to apps on iOS, Android, or interactive HTML5 and JavaScript applications. Content is managed in a completely presentation-independent format and can be served to all current and future platforms, including Google Glass, smartwatches or even cars, with Apple’s upcoming iOS 7 integration.
Since establishing the company in Berlin in 2011, Contentful’s first version of the product, previously named StorageRoom, has helped over 1,000 international customers – from individual developers to global corporations – rapidly build applications and distribute content to millions of consumers worldwide.
Sascha Konietzke, CEO of Contentful, explains “Before founding Contentful I developed many apps for clients. The problem my customers faced is that existing CMS are web publishing tools for page-centric websites and only superficially separate content from presentation thereby constraining publishing to new platforms. Contentful solves this issue: a content management platform focusing on structured content, with a great author experience and a powerful API.”
Roberto Bonanzinga, partner at Balderton Capital, comments: “A revolution in content is happening right now; how it is managed and consumed is changing forever. Contentful embraces this transformation and I am excited to be working with Sascha and his exceptional team to become the engine behind the future of content.”
In addition to securing venture capital funding to fuel the next stage of corporate development, Contentful has established a global Advisory Board of content and technology specialists. The board includes Alexander Bruehl, former partner at Atlas Capital; Francesco Cesarini, Founder & Technical Director at Erlang Solutions; Daniel Heaf, Chief Digital Officer at BBC Worldwide; Karen McGrane, CEO of Bond Art + Science; Todd Tran, Head of Advertising EMEA & APAC at Rovio; and Michael Wolfe, serial entrepreneur and former EIR at Benchmark.
Contentful is open to beta sign ups starting today at www.contentful.com.
About Contentful:
Contentful is a content management platform for web and mobile applications. It enables the distribution of content across multiple platforms with one single content input, by taking an API- first approach to content management.
Based in Berlin, Contentful was founded in 2011 by Sascha Konietzke (CEO) and Paolo Negri (CTO). The company has a wide user-base from national and international companies ranging from individual developers to large enterprises.
About Balderton Capital:
Balderton Capital is one of the largest venture capital firms in Europe, committed to finding and helping talented entrepreneurs build great companies. Based in London, the firm manages $1.9 billion in committed venture capital. Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 100 companies, principally in numerous European countries but also in the US and Asia. Notable investments include YOOX Group (the online retailer of leading fashion brands, listed in December 2009), LOVEFiLM (sold to Amazon in 2011), Betfair (the online betting exchange floated in London in October 2010), Bebo (sold to AOL for $850m), and MySQL (sold to Sun for $1 billion). For more information, visit: www.balderton.com.
About Point Nine Capital:
Point Nine Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm focused exclusively on early-stage Internet investments in areas like Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), eCommerce, marketplaces and mobile. The fund and its managers, Pawel Chudzinski and Christoph Janz, have backed a number of highly successful Internet companies such as Delivery Hero, Clio, Shiftplanning, Vend, Westwing and Zendesk from their earliest stages. In early 2013, Point Nine announced the closing of a new €40 million fund, Point Nine Capital Fund II. More information can be found at www.pointninecap.com.
Press contact:
Ms. Mariane Della Rocca
mariane@contentful.com
+49 176 9219 4536
Ms. Carmen Murray/Ms. Ellie Sweeney, Powerscourt (for Balderton Capital) +44 20 7324 0496 carmen.murray@powerscourt-group.com ellie.sweeney@powerscourt-group.com
Mr. Christoph Janz (for Point Nine Capital)
christoph@pointninecap.com