CapLinked Partners With Microsoft To Help BizSpark Startups Raise Cash

CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-SalesForce for private investing, has landed a significant deal today, helping Microsoft BizSpark startups raise cash via a new capital raising tool. As we’ve written in the past, CapLinked launched to allow entrepreneurs to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. Investors can use CapLinked to manage deals, build public profiles, leverage LinkedIn contacts and connect with promising startups.

Startups enrolled in the Microsoft BizSpark program will have exclusive access to new feature Deal Rocket, which allows them to submit their ‘deal room’ to dozens of angel groups and early stage venture capital funds around the country.

Here’s how Deal Rocket works. Companies can create secure, viral deal rooms on CapLinked to manage their capital raise or asset sale. The deals can then be shared with prospective investors and advisors, who can then invite others to view the deal. And companies can submit their deal to over 100 angel groups and venture capitalists pre-aggregated into Deal Rocket for review.

As you may know, BizSpark is a Microsoft startup accelerator program that provides fledgling companies with resources such as access to Microsoft software development tools, free or discounted software or cloud services, as well as access to the software giant’s broad partner network and as much marketing visibility as they can give them.

For background, CapLinked was founded by former PayPal marketing exec Eric Jackson and funded by a number of well known members of the PayPal mafia. Jackson says over 55,000 individuals and 6,000 companies are currently using the site to manage the private investing process and share $5 billion worth of deals.

For now, Deal Rocket is only available only to BizSpark startups, and will soon be available to other CapLinked users in the future. It’s a actually a pretty significant deal for CapLinked considering that there are over 45,000 startups in the CapLinked program. And having Microsoft as a partner isn’t to shabby either.