Shopify Announces $7 Million Series A Funding from Bessemer, FirstMark, and Felicis

Image via CrunchBase

December 13, 2010 10:00 AM Eastern Time 

Shopify plans expansion, backers make bet on the future of commerce

OTTAWA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Shopify, the online-retail platform bringing advanced commerce functionality to businesses of all sizes, today announced it has secured $7 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures.

“Shopify's app store and its open APIs exemplify the continuing 'consumer-ization' of enterprise software, and the ease with which even small and mid-sized businesses can now offer a sophisticated online retail experience.”

Shopify, which features a groundbreaking “app store” to help run your shop, will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company, including product development and international expansion. Shopify already serves customers in over 60 countries. The company also plans to invest in its technology, infrastructure and developer tools. Shopify is committed to attracting the best app developers to its platform, giving them access to thousands of retailers.

“Shopify has developed a breakthrough SaaS platform that makes it incredibly simple for retailers to create truly standout, easy-to-launch businesses online,” said Alex Ferrara, a Bessemer partner who will be joining Shopify’s board. “Shopify's app store and its open APIs exemplify the continuing 'consumer-ization' of enterprise software, and the ease with which even small and mid-sized businesses can now offer a sophisticated online retail experience.” Bessemer is also a backer of Yelp, another Web company that gives exposure to small, local businesses online.

“We founded Shopify because it was too difficult to get an online store up and running,” said Tobias Lutke, CEO and co-founder, Shopify. “While we are already profitable, the support gives us additional resources to improve our products and add value for our users. Our mission continues to be to make it as easy as possible for retailers of all sizes to start and run a business online.”

Shopify's software-as-a-service offering can scale as customers grow: Shopify processes more than $100M in revenue for customers as diverse as General Electric, Tesla Motors, Amnesty International and the Foo Fighters. “Shopify has allowed us to focus on our product,” said Craig Dalton, president and co-founder of DODOcase. “We knew we wanted to have a powerful e-commerce system in the background, so we chose Shopify.”

At the same time, Shopify makes it simple for smaller sellers with little or no programming skills to set up an online shop in just a few minutes. Each Shopify storefront is customizable and gives the user control over a shop's look and feel, in addition to setting up a streamlined checkout and the ability to easily integrate PayPal or a credit-card processor for payments. Shopify employs a dedicated team of security experts to ensure each storefront meets the highest possible security requirements. The Shopify App Store is a collection of Shopify apps that can extend the functionality of the online store, and has brand name apps such as Quickify, Chimpified, Hubspot, and Vurve.

Several members of Shopify’s management team are long-time Ruby on Rails pioneers including CEO and co-founder Tobias Lutke, who has served on the core team of the Ruby on Railsframework. Chief Technology Officer Cody Fauser is the lead author of Rails 3 in a Nutshell and is the sole maintainer of ActiveMerchant, the most popular payment processing library for Ruby.

About Shopify:

Shopify is the Internet’s most elegant, simple and affordable online retail platform aimed at providing businesses with easy to use e-commerce solutions. Shopify’s mission is to make it as easy as possible to set up and manage e-commerce storefronts. Shopify’s scalable and flexible full-featured platform enables any size business to efficiently launch and operate an online retail presence with ease. It currently hosts more than 10,000 online retailers, including Tesla Motors, Evisu Jeans and Robin Piccone.

About Bessemer Venture Partners:

Bessemer Venture Partners is a global investment group with offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Mumbai and Tel Aviv. One of the oldest venture-capital practices in the United States, BVP has partnered as an active, hands-on investor in Ciena, LinkedIn, Blue Nile, Postini, Skype, Staples, Quidsi, VeriSign and Yelp. More than 100 Bessemer-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in Canada, India, London and the United States. Learn more at www.bvp.com and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BessemerVP.

About FirstMark Capital:

Based in New York City, FirstMark Capital invests in ground-breaking companies that are creating new markets with innovative technology solutions or fundamentally changing existing markets by applying a fresh approach and new business model. A venture leader with nearly $2 billion in capital commitments, FirstMark's team of investment and operations professionals have decades of real-world experience and leadership in core technology markets, making the firm uniquely qualified to offer industry insight, relationships and the operational expertise to build lasting businesses. Select historical investments include: Netgear, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTGR); First Advantage Corp. (Acquired by First American Corporation; NASDAQ: FAF); StubHub, Inc (Acquired by eBay, Inc.; NASDAQ:EBAY); Netegrity, Inc. (Acquired by CA Inc; NASDAQ: CA); Flarion, Inc. (Acquired by Qualcomm, Inc; NASDAQ: QCOM); OutlookSoft Inc. (Acquired by SAP AG; NASDAQ: SAP); Vallent (Acquired by IBM; NASDAQ: IBM), Navic (Acquired by Microsoft; NASDAQ: MSFT) and Boomi (Acquired by Dell; NASDAQ: DELL). Current investments include: SecondMarket, Riot Games, Knewton, SPADAC, Conductor, Clickable and Lumos Labs. For more information, please visit http://www.firstmarkcap.com.

About Felicis Ventures:

Founded in 2006 by Aydin Senkut, Felicis Ventures is a super angel fund backed by institutional as well as high profile individual investors and based in Palo Alto, California. It is focused on supporting the best and brightest technology entrepreneurs with capital, mentorship and connections. Felicis Ventures’ portfolio is comprised of leading mobile and consumer Internet companies including Brightroll, Bump, Crowdflower, Erply, Imageshack, Inkling, Meraki, Posterous, Practice Fusion, Wildfire and Yume Networks. Recent exits of portfolio companies include Aardvark (acquired by Google), GeoAPI (acquired by Twitter), Mint (acquired by Intuit), Milo (acquired by eBay), Mob.ly (acquired by Groupon), Mochi Media (acquired by Shanda Games), Plusmo (acquired by AT&T), Powerset (acquired by Microsoft) and Tapulous (acquired by Disney). For more information, visit http://www.felicisvc.com/.

Contacts

Shopify:
Hill & Knowlton for Shopify
Rachel de Jong, 415-281-7148
rachel.dejong@hillandknowlton.com
or
Bessemer Venture Partners:
The Buckman Group for Bessemer Venture Partners
Rebecca Buckman, 650-703-0364
becky@thebuckmangroup.com
becky@bvp.com
or
Articulate Communications for FirstMark Capital
April Harned, 212-255-0080 ext. 23
aharned@articulatecomms.com
or
Felicis Ventures:
Atomic PR for Felicis Ventures
Sylvie Tongco, 415-593-1400
Sylvie@atomicpr.com

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