EXpresso offers Excel collaboration online
updated
People who crunch numbers for a living are still emailing each other Excel files.
EXpresso, a Silicon Valley start-up, is offering another option: It lets you upload, modify, share and store your Excel documents online, and chat with others about the changes you’re making. It provides auditing trails too.
It’s free for now, during a beta testing period, which makes it compelling. Eventually, however, the company will charge $10 or less per seat for basic use, and up to $80 per seat depending on requested features.
The company has gone through significant transformation. It was previously named SmartDB, and last week announced its database assets were sold to Rocket Software. SmartDB had raised $22.4 million over the past decade.
The Menlo Park, Calif., company has raised a fresh $2 million. It will use the additional money for sales and marketing as well as supporting PowerPoint and Word. It competes with other, spreadsheet focused startups like EditGrid, and similar products from large companies like Google and smaller companies like Zoho — not to mention Microsoft’s own, evolving online efforts. Xcellery is another online product that lets you collaborate with Excel, so it’s not clear how EXpresso can clearly distinguish itself.
The round was led by Individual’s Venture Fund, with previous backers Novus Ventures and Rocket Ventures participating.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.