Boxee, the media center software startup, has won a lot of fans with its open approach to streaming content. And as a result it has won some more money, to the tune of a $6 million second round, led by Boston’s General Catalyst Partners. The new money will be used for growth: Both expanding the team and expanding the service’s reach in the market, we’re told.
But why now? After all, Boxee raised its first round of funding just 8 months ago, a $4 million round with Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital investing. “We’ve seen a lot of momentum over the past couple of months. It seemed like it made sense to go ahead [with a new round],” Boxee’s new head of marketing Andrew Kippen tells us.
Kippen, who previously worked with Boxee in his role at Stage Two Consulting, is the first of many hires Boxee hopes to make over the next couple of months, CEO Avner Ronen says. When it closed its Series A round in November, Boxee was just 11 people, the goal is to ramp up to 20 as soon as possible. This includes engineers but also a strong business team to work on getting Boxee into more devices.
At the same time, Boxee is working hard to get the beta version of its software out the door (it’s still currently in Alpha). Back in June, it previewed that release while also unleashing a huge update to its service which finally included support for Windows. With that important support, the service now has over 600,000 users, we’re told.
General Catalyst Partners accounted for $4 million of this second round, with previous investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital each throwing in another $1 million as well. On top of the investment, General Catalyst’s Neil Sequeira is also joining Boxee’s board. Also on the board is Union Square’s Fred Wilson and Spark’s Bijan Sabet.