RSS Investors made their first bet on a company this week, adding $5 million to RSS entrepreneur Attensa. (eWEEK.com)The Portland, Oregon-based, venture-backed software company Attensa, Inc. recently announced that it has completed a Series B equity funding led by RSS Investors, which along with existing investors, SmartForest Ventures, bring its total investment to date to $12 million.
This round of financing raised $9 million, with the Portland company, SmartForest, adding $4 million to RSS Investors' $5 million. This is RSSI's first investment.
"John Palfrey, Richard Fishman and I had been thinking for a while about the need to bring more funding to the Web 2.0 movement, bring venture money to these entrepreneurs," RSSI founding member Jim Moore told Ziff Davis Internet.
"Our purpose is to promote the Web 2.0, RSS-enabled revolution."
Other members of the RSSI fund are Steve Smith and Tom Crowley, representing Ritchie Capital Management. They said the appeal of investing with Attensa was that it has an enterprise focus.
"While Attensa is interested in attention software, the thing that has been attractive to us is that they're building highly scalable, highly reliable technology—an RSS infrastructure," said Moore.
"There is an enterprise server that pulls all this information together and keeps track of what people are using. They're a plumbing company."
Attensa, Inc. is formerly known as You Software Inc., and is led by Craig Barnes, who founded and sold Portland, Ore.-based Extensis Inc., a software development company.
With the motto, "it's all about 'less is more,'" Attensa seeks to cut through what it sees as information overload from the Web, helping users prioritize by leaving less information, but more relevant information.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: RSSI Makes $9M Wager on Attensa
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