PastBook raises 250,000 US dollars

 

PastBook the startup originally founded in Milan by Stefano Cutello and his team and then moved to Amsterdam announce the rise of a 250,000 US dollars investment from a group of investors. The company now based in Amsterdam will soon go to Silicon Valley to expand to north America markets.

Following is the press release published by the company

 

PastBook secures $250K of funding from a group of investors. The investment comes as the second portion of seed funding for the company that aims at becoming the museum of online memories for everyone on the Internet. PastBook’s goal is to let its users rediscover important moments of their lives spread on various social networks and keep them in one place either online, or offline, as a PDF file, or a printed book: all with the same experience the users will be able to easily curate.

The investors are Noro Venture Capital, Vidoze BV and a group of undisclosed angel investors.

The investment comes as the second portion of seed funding for the company in the form of convertible notes. PastBook received the first seed investment as part of RockStart.Accelerator and after demo day PastBook secured a decisively bigger amount of funding to make PastBook’s mission happening.

Although social networks are becoming more and more part of our daily lives, people’s emotions and needs have not changed. What has changed is the way they create and share their memories. That’s why PastBook collects their pictures that are scattered everywhere on-line. After have heard the PastBook’s pitch, Steve Blank said that “PastBook is even more than solving just problem, it’s solving a human being need: rediscovering own memories.“

While the eventual goal of the PastBook team is to integrate all social networks,  the company has launched its beta version with Instagram. The service allows users to gather their Instagram photos in an online book by  connecting Instagram app to instagram.pastbook.com (http://instagram.pastbook.com/),  download it as a PDF file or get a professionally printed book.  PastBook allows to include comments and likes on  photos on Instagram in bid to make users’ memories more vivid. After signing in on the platform with their Instagram accounts, users instantly  see a list of their friends and are able to create and gift PastBooks to  their friends. They can either create a PastBook with automatically generated layout, or customize it page-by-page.

Facebook integration is the next objective for PastBook on its way to becoming a hub for users’ online social memories. For early access sign-up at facebook.pastbook.com (http://facebook.pastbook.com).

Founded in Milan, PastBook moved to Amsterdam in March 2012 after being selected by the Dutch  Accelerator, RockStart as one of the 10 startups out of hundreds of  applicants from around the world.

Stefano Cutello and Giuseppe Prioriello went all-in with PastBook, leaving two careers behind: one at eBay and the other in one of the leading printing companies in Italy.  During their first 5 months in Amsterdam, PastBook co-founders lived in a 20sqm containers, while having their property in Italy on sale.

“I went all-in with PastBook, I sold my car, my motorbike and both me and my partner Giuseppe are selling our houses in Italy because we want to go wherever we need to take PastBook. At DemoDay I said to investors: ‘You have the option: you can either buy our houses or invest directly in PastBook’ that worked. My house is still for sale.” – Stefano Cutello, Founder & CEO at PastBook

The founders will be in Silicon Valley in September to meet new investors and expand their network there.