Oxynade Raises 1 Million Euro for European Event Startup Happenr

I have not covered Oxynade-developed Happenr on Profy before but now that the company has the news of impressive funding it looks like more than a good reason to mention it here and introduce our readers to the new European startup working in the event search and tickets distribution field.

Despite of the ugly name without the last vowel that many are probably tired of already Happenr offers a really fresh solution to online events management. First of all, this European startup is focused on the European market as well (at least for now) so I was pleasantly surprised to find multiple events even for Moscow while Russia is rarely covered by such services at all. And even if Moscow was the only city in Russia available for now, it is still a very positive change from having to teach such sites your country exists at all.

This is made possible because of one simple difference: Happenr adds events to the database automatically by crawling web content looking for events in various supported countries. For now Happenr only offers users to browse events and get to know more information about what is going on where along with the info on a particular interesting event but as soon as in the first quarter of 2009 it will also enable direct purchase of tickets to events through a number of partnerships.

The €1 Million series A funding announced today by Oxynade comes from venture capital firm Arkafund and investor in many European seed-stage projects with global ambitions Vinnof. The funding is obviously intended to continue development of the Happenr product, expand the database of events and also reach agreements with large European media companies to use the platform to incorporate the Happenr events into their own content (like online event calendars).

Today’s announcement looks like an important one for the entire internet industry in Europe as our local startups may now realize there are good chances for raising significant amounts of funding even outside of the Silicon Valley and even amidst a huge financial crisis – provided that your application offers something good (instead of being a copycat of yet another US startup) and has a solid business model which is finally becoming an important factor for investors to even consider funding your startup.