Sometimes the easiest way of being authentic is to just post an email that was written to be private…

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:29:57 +0000
From: Francis Irving <francis@scraperwiki.com>
To: team@scraperwiki.com
Subject: Capital!

Today we closed our round of investment from Enterprise Ventures and Blue Fountain.

In total, provided we hit certain milestones next August, and with the Knight Foundation money, this means we have a cool $1,000,000 of capital.

Many many thanks to Aidan who has done most of the work, and now has no hair left to keep him warm in his old age (it generally takes, and took, total one person full time for 6 months to get investment).

And to everyone else for making a company that someone would want to invest in.

Short FAQ

1. What’s this money for? It’s for us to create a viable business, by helping coders make data do things across the web. To do that, we have to reach clear product/market fit, with paying developers, and/or with corporations. So please continue to ask of everything you/we do “is this testing, in as lean a way as possible, how we can get to product/market fit?”.

2. How long will it last for? If we hit the revenue in our business plan, in theory until August 2014. Even in worst cases, it’ll last a year.

3. Can I tell the world? Not just yet. We’re not press releasing it immediately, it’s embargoed for writing about, blogging about or tweeting about. But feel free to tell friends and family.

4. When’s the party? Not sure, but Monday night in Liverpool looks best to me. Who isn’t free then? (At least for an early evening drink. Now the hard (and fun) part starts! Francis

For full details, read the press release. As you can see, we also have a new board member – I’ll write about her in a separate blog post. Any questions? Please ask in the comments!