Seattle startup Pressplane just inked a new $3.5 million round, led by Madrona Ventures. Rob Glaser, founder of RealNetworks and now a partner at Accel, also invested personally and is joining board. Second Avenue Partners and chairman Mika Salmi (formerly of MTV Networks and Atom Entertainment) also participated.
The money will go into further development of Zapd, a mobile publishing platform that lets people create good-looking, customized Websites directly from their iPhones. (You can see it in action on this episode of Fly or Die). Since its launch in March, Zapd has been downloaded 320,000 times with very little marketing.
“We think its time to rethink websites. How they are made. How they are consumed,” says CEO Kelly Smith. He says the new funding will go into adding more features such as live realtime themes, interactive widgets, and hooks into social networks. Pressplane’s other product is Inkd, a custom printing, logo, and design service.