Brandwatch, a social media monitoring company, today announces it has closed a $6 million investment led by Nauta Capital. Carles Ferrer, General Partner at the venture capitalist firm will join the Brandwatch board, along with Al Sisto, Venture Partner, who will join as an observer.

Demonstrating its ongoing support and commitment to its strategic partnership with Brandwatch, Gorkana Group has also further increased its investment as a key stakeholder in the company.

The funding will fast track Brandwatch plans to bring innovative products to market, expand internationally and bolster its sales and marketing teams. Founded in 2007 by Giles Palmer, Brandwatch is based in Brighton, UK, with offices in New York and Germany. Expansion includes the development of the US and EMEA and targeting of the LATAM and SE Asia markets.

The Brandwatch platform has been built in-house so clients benefit from a tool that can be adapted quickly to deliver the highest quality data in the marketplace, which is the company's stated objective. This sets the company apart from competitors that buy-in technology and data.

Since its launch in August 2007, Brandwatch has acquired more than 300 clients and several thousand users, including global brands and agencies such as HSBC, DDB, Ipsos and Mediacom.

"We are extremely pleased to be part of Brandwatch and to be able to contribute to its future success." said Nauta Capital General Partner Carles Ferrer. "We have followed the space and the company very closely for a long period and believe it has true potential to lead the segment internationally. Giles and the team have done a superb job building the strongest product and positioning the company as leader in several markets."

Giles Palmer, Founder and CEO of Brandwatch, commented "We started as a small bunch of geeks that lived by the sea with a passion for technology and innovation. Today we are a bigger bunch with bigger aspirations, and now not everyone is a geek. The funding means we can focus on leading the market with innovative products and hire more of the right people to join our team and build on the small success we have already achieved."

Jeremy Thompson, MD of Gorkana Group, commentated "We are very pleased to further invest to support this exciting next phase in Brandwatch's evolution".

About Nauta Capital

Nauta Capital (http://nautacapital.com) manages three funds and has offices in Barcelona and Boston. Nauta recently launched its third fund, Nauta III, and has a total of $230M under management. Nauta invests from $1M to $10M per company, mainly in three technology verticals: wireless/mobility, enterprise SW / SaaS / Security, and ecommerce / internet. Nauta targets companies for investment in very early stage (Seed Capital) up to more advanced stages of development (Series A and B). Nauta actively invests in Western Europe and the US.

About Brandwatch

The Brandwatch monitoring solution helps companies find conversation about their brand or market online, in real-time. It provides powerful insights and analysis on sentiment, market trends, customer opinionand brand reputation, and is used by brands and agencies to inform decisions that help to improve their business. Brandwatch continually crawls the web and stores the data in-house. It offers the widest global coverage of all tools within the social media monitoring space, covering 19 languages. Advanced query set up means the tool cuts through the huge amount of data it covers, extracting the conversation that matters, fast. For additional information, please visit http://www.brandwatch.com.