American City Business Journals has led a $2 million investment in NetProspex, a startup which boasts a crowdsourced online database of more than eight million sales contacts. NetProspex lets sales people exchange sales contacts they don’t use for others in its online database; users can also buy contacts directly. The company verifies the data and puts an accuracy rating on it. New funds will be used to “accelerate” growth.

In a release, American City Business Journals, a subsidiary of Advance Publications, is described as a “key partner” of the startup, although the extent of the previous relationship between the two companies is not explained. The local business newspaper chain also led a funding round in social media firm ThePort Network in December. Other investors who participated in the NetProspex round were not named. Release.