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Opal Labs raises $8 million investment, led by Madrona Ventures [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.](Oregonian (Portland, OR) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 03--Portland online marketing startup Opal Labs said Friday it has raised $8 million in venture capital, bringing the total invested in the company to more than $10 million. Opal said it will use the funding to market its services to big-name clients, add personnel and move to new offices. Within Portland's startup community Opal is among the city's best-regarded young companies. The four-year-old business specializes in social media marketing tools and has a formidable client list including Levi Strauss & Co, Nike, Target, NASA, Nestlé and Burberry. Opal's software helps marketers collaborate to plan their social networking campaigns, tracking what they do online and helping to plot the evolution of a campaign. The company raised $2.1 million last winter, backed by the Oregon Angel Fund. Opal has 30 employees in its Pearl District office and 12 open positions listed on its website; the company said Friday it's moving to new headquarters later this year, but declined to say where the new offices are. Social marketing is rapidly becoming Portland's specialty, with many of the city's young tech companies focused on various niches within the field. Janrain enables social logins, Little Bird mines social data to find influential people online, and Chirpify connects traditional marketing campaigns to Twitter and other social networks with hashtags. Friday's round was led by Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle venture firm that previously backed Portland cloud computing startups AppFog and Cedexis, and social marketing startup ShopIgniter. AppFog sold to CenturyLink last year, and last month Madrona combined ShopIgniter with another of its Portfolio companies, Seattle-based Mixpo. -- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699 ___ (c)2014 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Visit The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) at www.oregonian.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |