• Mangrove Smells Opportunity in Small Businesses, Backs SohoOS with $1.75M

    Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

    Roi Carthy is the Managing Partner at Initial Capital. Previously, Roi has worked at companies such as Soluto, Zend Technologies and 888.com. Roi has been covering the Israeli startup scene for TechCrunch since 2007. Born in Israel, Roi has spent many years abroad living in both the US (Boston, Olivet, DC) and in Europe (Budapest, Zurich). Today, Roi works... → Learn More

    It looks like Mangrove Capital Partners believes in the business opportunity held in helping small businesses, do more, well, business. The Luxembourg-based venture capital firm has invested $1.75M in SohoOS to further propel the company’s small business management suite. Michael Jackson, previously COO of Skype, will take a board seat.

    The concept behind SohoOS’s offering is to put business utilities that are common for medium to large businesses with resources, in the hands of both online and offline small and micro businesses. Think designers, programmers, plumbers, yoga instructors, small PR firms, consultants, the list can go on and on.

    Since debuting on TechCrunch nearly a year ago, 20,000 businesses have become active accounts on SohoOS’s platform, making use of features such as invoicing and billing (without the need to open a merchant account), CRM, email and SMS broadcast, a sales flow manager, as well as document and project management.

    The company has chosen to forgo early revenue for the sake of distribution. As such, the service is being offered completely free-of-charge. Certain premium services, however, such as bulk-SMS packages and VoiP services are offered at additional costs. These though are priced on a pay-as-you-go basis, and most companies can probably live without them and use SohoOS without spending a penny.

    Ron Daniel, CEO, gave me a glimpse of a soon-to-be-realsed iPhone app for business management on the go. The app, along with a localized version of the service in several languages, will both be rolled out in the coming months. The investment from Mangrove will be used to scale the team as well to maintain the free version of the service. We’ll continue to keep tabs on the company and see whether Mangrove’s investment was money well spent.

    Company: Soho OS
    Website: SohoOS.com
    Launch Date: 2009
    Funding: $3M

    Soho OS allows users to manage all aspects of their small business in a single platform and offers all the primary tools needed to help their business grow and succeed. Soho OS aims to create a unique Eco-system that will empower small businesses in today’s corporate dominated world. Soho OS’ SaaS-based technology provides users with free, customizable cloud based business management tools with networking capabilities. Premium services are also available on a pay-as-you-go basis.

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    Financial-organization: Mangrove Capital Partners
    Website: mangrove-vc.com
    Launch Date: March 2000

    Mangrove Capital Partners “Mangrove” provides venture capital with a punch to entrepreneurs looking to build world class companies. Their mission is to help turn visions into realities by providing financing, thoughtful advice, relevant experience and deep industry relationships to their portfolio companies. They look to invest in companies operating Internet or Software businesses as early as possible in their development. They are particularly comfortable investing prior to product launch and view their role as an accelerator of growth and a...

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