I’m not the only one who was impressed by Sprout, a browser-based tool for creating interactive widgets in Flash that debuted in February.
The Honolulu and San Francisco-based startup has collected $5 million in venture funding to fuel its operations. Polaris Venture Partners led the round, with previous investors Global Venture Capital and Mitch Kapor participating. Mike Hirshland of Polaris will join Sprout’s board of directors.
Sprout is notable for the power it gives non-techies to design impressive pieces of distributable content, which can be used primarily for viral marketing campaigns. These pieces, called “sprouts”, are like mini-websites in that they can contain pages with elements you’d find on regular webpages: text, links, graphics, video, audio, and even interactive components like polls and maps.
In April, Sprout announced an SDK that could be used by 3rd party developers to integrate functionality into the Sprout creation tool, thereby turning it into a platform of sorts.
The company has, of course, created a sprout to mark its funding announcement. We’ve embedded it below.