Space Monkey, the startup offering a peer-to-peer alternative to cloud storage services like Dropbox, just raised $2.25 million in a seed round of funding.
The company says that it’s combining the benefits of both local storage and the cloud. Every Space Monkey customer gets their own storage device, so they can access their files without having to worry about download times or pay the higher cost of cloud storage (which can become an issue when you’re talking about large media files like videos). Copies of those files are also distributed in chunks to other Space Monkey devices, allowing for remote access and backup.
I first wrote about the company when it won the best new startup prize at the Launch conference in March. At the time, some readers pointed out that there are some open source solutions trying to do something similar. However, there’s a big difference between an interesting open source project and a consumer-grade service and company. Product Guy Clint Gordon-Carroll (yes, that’s his real title) says that the real challenge is creating something that’s actually compelling to a large audience. For example, he notes that by introducing the Space Monkey device, users no longer need to keep their computers online at all times.
In the first week alone, Gordon-Carroll says Space Monkey saw 10,000 sign ups. The company is now planning to ship the first devices this fall.
At the conference, Space Monkey had already raised $750,000. That amount was rolled into the new seed round, which was led by by Google Ventures and Venture51. Here’s the full, incredibly long list of investors (or at least those who can be disclosed publicly):
- Polaris Venture Partners
- Morado Ventures
- Social + Capital Partnership
- Zelkova Ventures
- Data Collective (Matt Ocko)
- B-Squared Ventures
- TriplePoint
- Sky Dayton
- Benjamin Ling
- Nicolas Berggruen
- Jason Calacanis
- Bill Lee
- Steve Chen
- Ben Narasin
- Don Hutchison