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These days it is interesting to see how instead of sending a press release, companies announce their funding news by sharing a link to a TechCrunch post.  So did GrabCAD, informing via Robin Wauters that it raised $4 million from Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture to further develop its online community of mechanical engineers.

Estonian GrabCAD, which now has its main office in Boston and a development center in Estonia, has graduated from TechStars and Seedcamp accelerator programs, and previously raised $1.1 million of seed funding in 2011.

The initial value proposition of GrabCAD is access to the free CAD model library. The participating engineers get new ideas, learn from others and find interesting projects to work on. Ultimately GrabCAD aims to become the largest mechanical engineering team in the world.

A comparison with Elance would be a natural one, but GrabCAD founder and CEO Hardi Meybaum shared with GoalEurope, that it would be wrong to compare the company with the online contractor marketplaces. According to Meybaum, GrabCAD is first and foremost about the engineers expressing themselves through work. So think of it as an online designer community. The clients will get in touch if they like their works, and a badge system, used to reward the best engineers, also helps.

Congratulations to the team.

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