ownCloud Closes $2.5 Million Seed Round

ownCloud Inc., in open source file sync and share software, announced the closing of a second seed round, led by current investor General Catalyst Partners, a growth equity and venture capital firm.

The Lexington, MA-based company will use the funds to further expand its more than 70-partner channel, expand its large enterprise and education customer base and support service providers who implement file sync and share based on ownCloud.

The company also announced that General Catalyst MD Larry Bohn will join the company’s board of directors.

Unlike simple apps like Dropbox and Box, which store data at remote third-party data centers, the ownCloud server is deployed on a company’s or service provider’s servers, integrating with existing security, storage, monitoring and reporting tools.

With more than 650,000 users worldwide, it offers ease-of-use and the flexibility, sophistication and security that can only be provided by software installed on site. Users can host their own data sync and share services on their own hardware and storage, use popular public hosting and storage offerings, or both – true hybrid cloud storage.

"We were very encouraged that many of our current investors – including General Catalyst – were so impressed by our momentum that they came to us for this round," said Markus Rex, ownCloud CEO. "We’re also happy to welcome several new investors and of course Larry to our board."

"We’ve been excited about ownCloud since its infancy, and after watching everything they’ve accomplished in a very short time, it validated our belief that they’d developed an exceptional team with an exceptional product," said Bohn. "There’s no one in this increasingly crowded market that can do the things ownCloud does – integrate closely with existing IT, innovate at lightning speed and offer choice of storage locations. With those capabilities already in place differentiating it from the competition, we’re confident that ownCloud will succeed."

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