AppGyver Announces $2.5 million Funding For Platform Expansion and According Workforce Additions

    HTML5 mobile apps are starting to look and feel more like native apps, thanks to folks hard at work on the technology and platform side. These people include Helsinki-based AppGyver, who announce they’ve raised $2.5 million in what they’re calling “super angel” funding. The funding round was led by Initial Capital with participation by Finnish VC Open Ocean Capital. Previously Appgyver raised $1 million in funding after prototyper was launched, putting their total funding somewhere north of $3.5 million.

    Since launching Steroids last August the company says more than 10,000 apps have been built on it. These users are said to include your average mix of startuppers and freelancers, but are also a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, like Accenture, AT&T, Groupon, SAP, IBM, and Salesforce.

    “Developers need access to tools that allow one to do mobile apps which have a native look and feel, and where the same code can be run on multiple platforms. AppGyver provides this in an easy-to-use way,” added Michael “Monty” Widenius, Open Ocean partner in a statement. “Could one ask for more?”

    Today, with 25 000 active users, Appgyver is expecting to quadruple it’s user pool, as long as the companies growth curve keeps its pace, says Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Appgyver.

    Appgyver’s future is indeed looking bright. Fresh and almost seamlessly acquired capital (Intial Capital was the first VC they contacted and the rest we already know) will not only add to Appgyver employees but also lead their mobile app development platform towards new, uncharted seas with plenty of booty to be found. As Lehtimäki puts it, the platform isn’t just directed to game developers, instead, their focus has expanded on a more enterprise level, which mean apps from one end to the other, be it gaming or accounting are under plans to be supported.

    “Future improvements into Appgyver will include cloud services among others into a setup where the backend and what the developer is building on it will be hard to even tell apart from each other. The native feel is really what counts” Lehtimäki adds.

    While competition is very much out there, Appgyver’s analytics tell us that 80% of current users have defected from Phone Gap, currently their major competitor. This transition and their increasing popularity that has gone viral is one of the main reasons behind this latest fund.

    Currently the basic use of Appgyver is free, all the way to actual release in the app store. Extra add-ons, such as push notifications and facebook integration requires a minimum premium account; a membership that starts at $20/month.