Often, startups will issue a stuffy press release when announcing their venture rounds. But in the case of Etsy - an online platform to buy and sell handmade goods - there is actually a detailed blog post from the co-founder Robert Kalin, which even includes a video.

In all, the company raised $27 million in a venture round. The investors include Union Square Ventures, Hubert Burda Media and Accel Partners. In fact, Accel Partners' Jim Breyer is taking a board seat (keep in mind that he invested in Facebook in the early stages).

Kalin goes into lots of detail on the "use of proceeds." Etsy is going to invest about $5 million in hardware and servers, and there will be big improvements in the payment processing system, which is on par with Amazon.com's (NASDAQ: AMZN). Oh, and the company wants to provide Google-like (NASDAQ: GOOG) search functionality.

Even without such things, Etsy is getting lots of traction. The community has more than 650,000 members and there are more than 120,000 sellers.

And as seen with its funding press release - which is one of the most transparent I've ever seen -- Etsy certainly takes the concept of "community" very seriously.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Etsy crafts a $27 million venture deal originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.