Ottawa, Canada (PRWEB) October 17, 2011
Shopify, a leading ecommerce platform used to create and power online stores, today announced that it closed a $15 million Series B growth investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Georgian Partners. This new investment adds to the $7 million of Series A funding received last year, providing a sizable balance to fund continued growth.
Tobias Lütke, Shopify’s CEO and co-founder, launched the company in 2006 after he discovered how difficult it was to create a professional online store. Today, over 15,000 active online stores in 80 countries are powered by Shopify. Individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses use Shopify to setup and power their online stores. Shopify’s product is known for its focus on ease of use, beautiful store designs, and scalability.
“The overwhelming majority of businesses are not yet selling online because the tools available have historically been complex and expensive,” said Bessemer Venture Partners’ Trevor Oelschig. “Shopify is working to change this by building beautiful products that are easy for businesses to use. Shopify’s rapid growth and customer success speaks to the power of Shopify’s platform and we are excited to be involved as they continue to expand.”
“This large investment will allow us to aggressively expand operations with a focus on three areas of growth. First, we’re looking to continue hiring the best developers and designers in the world. Second, we would like to open the door to strategic partnerships and acquisitions. Lastly, we will provide seed funding to developers looking to build apps that integrate with the Shopify platform,” said Lütke.
With the announcement of the funding also comes the official launch of “The Shopify Fund.” This $1 million dollar fund will be used to encourage and finance developers to create ecommerce add-ons that plug into the Shopify platform. Nearly one hundred such Apps have already been created by individuals, startups, and established businesses like QuickBooks, MailChimp, Hubspot, and Olark. More information on The Shopify Fund can be found at http://www.shopify.com/fund.
Shopify’s merchants span from budding entrepreneurs to major brands like Angry Birds, General Electric, Tata, Tesla Motors, Amnesty International, DODOcase, CrossFit, Evisu, LMFAO, Beastie Boys, and The Foo Fighters. “We looked at a number of different ecommerce options, but Shopify made the most sense,” said Niklas Kari, Angry Birds’ Head of Retail, “We had strong recommendations from other partners, and setting up the store was easy.” Rovio recently announced they have sold over 2 million Angry Birds plush toys.
To learn more about Shopify, please visit http://www.shopify.com, and to join Shopify's growing team, check out http://www.shopify.com/careers.
About Shopify
Shopify is an online SaaS ecommerce platform that allows individuals and businesses to create awesome online stores. The platform currently hosts over 15,000 active online retailers, including: Angry Birds, DODOcase, Amnesty International, General Electric, Tesla Motors, Tata, Penny Arcade, CrossFit, GitHub, Evernote, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, Epic Meal Time, and Evisu Jeans. Shopify was founded in 2006 by two snowboarding enthusiasts who wanted to create a better way to sell their snowboards online. Shopify is located in Ottawa, Canada, and has over 70 employees. On December 12, 2010, Shopify announced a $7 million Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Felicis Ventures. For more information, please visit http://www.shopify.com.
Shopify Contact:
Mark Hayes
mark(dot)hayes(at)shopify(dot)com | 613-552-7868
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass., New York, Mumbai and Herzliya, Israel. One of the longest standing venture capital practices in the United States, BVP has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena, LinkedIn, Celtel, Blue Nile, Skype, Staples and Yelp. More than 100 BVP-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in Canada, India, the U.K. and the United States.
BVP has participated in each successive wave of innovation in retail since the mid-1980s, beginning with investments in big box retailers including Staples and The Sports Authority and continuing into leading Internet retailers like Blue Nile and Quidsi, which operates Diapers.com and Soap.com. BVP continues to invest in category-leading companies that play into the growth of e-commerce, including Delivery Agent, OneStop Internet, KupiVIP, Criteo and Convertro. For more information, please visit http://www.bvp.com.
Bessemer Venture Partners Contact:
Ashley Gagnier
gagnier(at)bvp(dot)com | 914-833-5357
About FirstMark Capital
Based in New York City, FirstMark Capital is an early stage venture capital firm investing in visionary entrepreneurs who are creating new markets with innovative technology solutions or fundamentally changing existing markets by applying a fresh approach or new business model. FirstMark partners early in a company’s lifecycle, offering deep industry insight, a broad network of relationships and the operational expertise to build lasting businesses. Select historical investments include Riot Games (Acquired by Tencent Holdings); Duck Creek Technologies (Acquired by Accenture); Netgear; Boomi (Acquired by Dell); StubHub (Acquired by eBay); Netegrity (Acquired by CA); OutlookSoft (Acquired by SAP); and Navic Networks (Acquired by Microsoft). Current investments include: SecondMarket, Knewton, Pinterest, Shopify and Lumos Labs. For more information, visit http://www.firstmarkcap.com.
FirstMark Capital Contact:
Danielle Hootnick
dhootnick(at)firstmarkcap(dot)com | 212-792-2200
About Felicis Ventures
Felicis Ventures provides early stage funding to exceptional entrepreneurs worldwide. Felicis Ventures’ portfolio encompasses over 60 companies including Clearslide, Rovio, Shopify, Wildfire and Practice Fusion. In the last four years, 20 Felicis backed companies have been acquired by firms such as Google, Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Ebay, Chegg and Intuit. Founded in 2005, Felicis is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit http://www.felicisvc.com.
Felicis Ventures contact:
Sylvie Tongco, Atomic PR for Felicis Ventures
Sylvie(at)atomicpr(dot)com | 415-593-1400
About Georgian Partners
Georgian Partners is as growth equity firm investing in expansion stage enterprise software, and information aggregation companies. Georgian Partners was founded by successful entrepreneurs and technology executives, and is backed by a team with deep operational experience. Georgian Partners is based in Toronto, Canada. For more information, please visit http://www.georgianpartners.com.
Georgian Partners contact:
Justin LaFayette
jlafayette(at)georgianpartners(dot)com| 416-571-7317
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