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Mosaic Storage Systems collects $875,000 to market cloud-based services to photographers

Posted by Scott Kirsner February 28, 2013 08:28 AM

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

Smile and say "VC!"

Mosaic Storage Systems, a two-year-old New Hampshire startup that helps photographers back up their work to the cloud, and access it from any device, has just raised $875,000 in funding. The money comes from Borealis Ventures, Wasabi Ventures, eCoast Angel Network and 10x Venture Partners.

The company offers web-based services for professional and "prosumer" photographers who use Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom software to manage their images. Mosaic's MosaicView product makes a photographer's Lightroom catalog accessible on the web, or on iOS or Android tablets and smartphones. (It's available in a free version that offers access to the most recent 2,000 pictures, or a $7 per month version that serves up everything.) MosaicArchive is an online backup service geared to photographers, who store lots of large RAW image files and don't want to wait an eternity for them to get uploaded to Mosaic's servers. (The company also allows customers to mail in hard drives full of photos, or to have the company ship out hard drives in the event of data loss.) That service starts at $12 per month.

"One thing that is generally understood in the photography space," Mosaic co-founder Gerard Murphy explains, "is that companies like Carbonite throttle your bandwidth after a certain amount of uploading. Carbonite starts dramatically reducing how quickly you can upload files once you get to 200 gigabytes of space. Our market picks up where these 'unlimited plans leave off." Murphy, above, says that the company consists of 2.5 people so far: himself, co-founder Andy Young, and a part-time support staffer.

Mosaic was the winner of a recent competition that offered as first prize a trip to next week's Launch Festival in San Francisco. Mosaic operates out of the ABI Innovation Hub, a shared startup space in Manchester.

Mosaic is the second investment out of the $30 million Borealis Granite Fund, which is managed by Borealis Ventures and includes $4.5 million from the State of New Hampshire.

A screenshot of Mosaic's app on an iPad and iPhone is below:

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Scott Kirsner was part of the team that launched Boston.com in 1995, and has been writing a column for the Globe since 2000. His work has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and Variety. Scott is also the author of the books "Fans, Friends & Followers" and "Inventing the Movies," was the editor of "The Convergence Guide: Life Sciences in New England," and was a contributor to "The Good City: Writers Explore 21st Century Boston." Scott also helps organize several local events on entrepreneurship, including the Nantucket Conference and Future Forward. Here's some background on how Scott decides what to cover, and how to pitch him a story idea.