Norway-based Labrador CMS raises €2.5M for its CMS ‘by and for journalists’

Oslo-based Labrador CMS, a company that specialises in content management system solutions and SaaS services to publishers, announced that it has raised €2.5M in a two-step funding round led by the Norwegian early-stage venture firm Skagerak Capital. 

TV2, one of Norway’s largest commercial media houses, and Aller Media, a leading Nordic media and services group, also backed the round.

Labrador CMS says the raised capital will help it to scale international sales and automate the onboarding of new clients. 

Design and build your online publication

Founded in 2011 and currently led by CEO Jon Reidar Hammerfjeld, Labrador CMS is a SaaS platform that handles the publishing needs of both large national news operations and smaller niche magazines. The company claims that its easy-to-use system is made by and for journalists.

The software is a no-code visual builder for frontpages and articles, including parallax effects. Labrador CMS can be powered by personalisation algorithms and run in automatic, hybrid or manual mode. According to the company, one significant Swedish client observed a 25 per cent reduction in article production time and a 62.5 per cent reduction in front-page management time with Labrador CMS.

Chair of the Board, Jan Thoresen, says, “Labrador is a software created to help reporters and editors achieve professional freedom. Now we are ready to welcome international customers at a high scale. We’ve been through years of investments spent on developing a failsafe backend, using advanced machine learning, and implementing tailor-made text editors that eliminate complicated training programmes. The reward is that all journalists and editorial staff who triy out our system, love it.”

Labrador CMS also has self-healing cloud servers dispersed across several nations for uptime security and complete customer hosting.

The company’s customers range from well-known brand names like Elle magazine, Computer World and Science Nordic, to national online news operations like Dagbladet.no and TV2 Norway. Currently, Labrador CMS runs and hosts over 200 sites in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Belgium and Chile. 

Brief about the investor 

Skagerak Capital is a VC company that backs top businesses and supports their growth. Together with outstanding entrepreneurs, the team has built profitable businesses for more than 10 years. 

The team has expertise in building businesses into global successes, managing six funds and more than €100M. The firm has completed a dozen international exits and invested in over 40 companies. 

Skagerak Capital claims to receive, review, and invest in around 1 per cent of the 400 cases it gets each year.