Last Year's Arctic15 Winner, Mancx, Secures $3 Million Funding

    With things falling into place for this year’s Arctic15, we hear some great news from last year’s winner, Mancx. The Stockholm-based company has raised $1.65 million in financing led by Almi Invest and Chalmers Innovation Seed Fund, bringing the total money raised to $3 million. With this announcement, the company also tells us they’re opening a San Francisco headquarters.

    Mancx has built a community for business answers that allows for private individuals to securely buy and sell their knowledge with others. The platform competes with Quora, the Yahoo-answers for businesspeople, but rather than searching for information and finding something from 2010, on Mancx matches incoming questions with the right people to ensure the questioner gets the fresh and deep information they need. The platform also ensures the answering party gets fairly paid for their efforts. ‘

    “Most Q&A websites only provide advice, opinion or self-promotion. Some of the answers are even too old to be useful,” explains Henrik Dillman, Mancx CEO and Founder. “Our research shows that professional business users prefer answers they can trust from a community that can deliver ‘industrial strength’ information quality that is fresh and calibrated to their specific needs”

    The platform additionally provides full anominity between buyers and sellers, while still allowing people to contact each other for more information.

    Here are some example questions on Mancx:

    Looking for intro and contacts to Flickr, preferably in biz dev or product management.$50

    What are the best websites for financial professionals, community-wise and for learning.$40

    Can you name 1 or 2 larger blog networks in Germany, France and the U.S? $300

    Who are the 10 biggest holiday-home rental companies in Spain? $44

    The money will be used to expand the community through social networks such as LinkedIn and Viadeo. A trusted knowledge community isn’t that valuable without a diverse background to draw from, so it will be interesting to see if Mancx hits as many notable names as Quora.