Swedish startup Greta is on a somewhat quiet mission to disrupt the multi-billion dollar Content Delivery Network (CDN) market. The young company already boasts an impressive list of angel investors — including Jan Erik Solem (founder Polar Rose and Mapillary), Hampus Jakobsson (founder TAT and Brisk), and Jeremy Yap (recently awarded best angel investor at The Europas) — and now new VC BlueYard Capital has also become a backer.
The Berlin-based VC has led a $1.1 million seed round in Greta, while Sophia Bendz, previously Global Director of Marketing at Spotify and now Executive in Residence at VC Atomico, also joins the lists of investors. I also understand that it was BlueYard’s investmentthesis, which talks about the “decentralisation of markets” and “democratisation of capabilities”, that first brought the VC to Greta’s attention.
“We had other VCs who wanted to get in on the round but we decided to go with BlueYard as the only institutional investor at this stage as our primary aim wasn’t to secure funding but rather to get access to BlueYards’ knowledge and global network,” Anna Ottosson, CEO and co-founder of Greta, tells me.
“We were really determined on not raising our seed round until end of this year, but when we met with Jason Whitmire, partner at BlueYard for the first time we got extremely intrigued by their thesis and how they looked at the world. They have already proven that they’re willing to take bold bets on technology startups and that they’re serious about their mission to upgrade the internet, which is very much in line with our vision for Greta”.
Launched late last year, Greta has developed tech that is able to calculate the most efficient route for site content, such as images and video, and deliver it via traditional server and CDN providers or Greta’s own peer-to-peer solution, based on whichever of the two will provide the best experience for end users.
techcrunch.com
