PressPlane is a new stealth startup company that aims to “making your business life easier.”  PressPlane is being incubated by Curious Office, a seed stage investment company based in Seattle.  What makes PressPlane a big deal is the investors that joined in to put $1.7 million Series A into the company. 

As mentioned in the title, the investors include:
- Mika Salmi (President of MTV and founder of AtomFilms)
- Rich Barton (Founder of Expedia and Zillow)
- Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia)
- Andy Liu (Publisher of BuddyTV)
- Alex Algard (Founder of Whitepages)
- Geoff Entress (Venture Partner at Madrona)
- Andy Sack (Co-founder of Judy’s Book)
- Adrian Hanauer (Curious Office co-founder)
- John Cunningham
- Dough Rowan (former CEO of Corbis Corporation)

PressPlane will be a way for small businesses to create marketing materials according to TechCrunch.  If you are an accountant, you can go into the pre-made themes and create brochures, business cards, etc.  There was also a rumor that VC firm, DFJ wanted to invest and gain a board seat, but it didn’t work out. 

PressPlane is currently in alpha mode, but users can still request for an invitation.

Fanzter is an early-stage new media firm that started in June 2007. Fanzter raised $2 million from Seattle, Wash.-based VC companies, Second Avenue Partners and Curious Office along with several other angel investors. The founders of Fanzter are Aaron LaBerge and Eric Kirsten. Aaron used to work as Senior VP of technology and product development at ESPN. Eric Kirsten was a VP of Business Development at AT&T Broadband.

Fanzter is based in Collinsville, CT. Part of the investment includes an amount from Richard Barton of Benchmark Capital, Expedia, and Zillow.

“We’re very fortunate to have the backing and support of such prominent and accomplished business leaders and investors,” stated LaBerge, the CEO of Fanzter. “Their collective business, technology, design and product development expertise is an incredible asset. We’re excited to tap into that expertise and vision as we continue building a product that people will love using.”

Fanzter’s first product, Coolspotters.com will be started early this year.

[Information Source: paidContent]