ESPOO, FINLAND--(Marketwire - Jun 3, 2011) - Open Ocean (www.openoceancapital.com), the early-stage venture capital fund led by the team that sold MySQL for $1B, announced a "start-up pitch" competition today to mark the recent launch of its Fund Three. In establishing this unique contest, Open Ocean is encouraging the most disruptive start-ups in their field seeking venture funding to apply.
"We have had such a focus on Europe and open source, that we thought this would be a great opportunity for some of the start-ups that might normally fly under our radar to put forward their best case to us," said Patrik Backman, Open Ocean Managing Partner. "Regardless of your 'game,' if you're changing it, we'd love to hear from you."
The start-up team selected by Open Ocean will be invited to an all-inclusive summer visit to Finland, offering exclusive and unprecedented access to the Open Ocean team, as well as its insights. While much of the day will focus on assisting the winning start-up with its business plan and organization, there will also be myriad leisure-time activities planned for the lucky winner. Activities include speedboat racing on the Gulf of Finland and other fun surprises, culminating in a traditional Scandinavian crayfish party in the Finnish archipelago.
"Like a lot of people in our business, we work hard and we play hard. However, as venture capitalists that were once founders, we want to stress that we come into this in a very untraditional way and we're looking for a different kind of venture partner that is doing for their industry what MySQL did for web databases," emphasized Backman. "More than anything, we really want to bond with those start-ups we choose to invest in and make sure they know they are more than just some numbers in a ledger to us."
The deadline for all interested start-ups to submit their pitches is June 15. The format should be a maximum five-slide presentation and three-minute video, which can be submitted via email or Dropbox. For more information please visit www.openoceancapital.com or contact Tom Henriksson at tom@openoceancapital.com.
About Open Ocean
Open Ocean is a leading early-stage venture capital company, with a particular emphasis on European start-ups deploying user community or open source business models. Open Ocean was the first major owner in MySQL AB, which was later sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion in 2008. Above and beyond many venture capital firms, Open Ocean is also able to leverage its direct experience with MySQL as founders to provide hands-on support to the management of the start-ups and early-stage companies receiving Open Ocean's funding. Open Ocean is led by partners Patrik Backman, Ralf Wahlsten and Tom Henriksson and is advised by "community and open source wizard" Michael "Monty" Widenius, the original developer of the MySQL database and the co-founder of the MySQL AB company.