BigCommerce, based in Austin, Texas, completed a big round of financing.
The start of the growth phase, which builds ecommerce sites for Sony, Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $ 64 million to accelerate its operations. The investment was led by Goldman Sachs, with the participation of General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital. And that brings to more than 200 million dollars the total of of BigCommerce since its creation in 2009.
BigCommerce has developed a template for its customers to launch websites with manageable payment tracking and shipping. It also facilitates cross-selling on Amazon, eBay and Facebook. The company says that it is able to help e-merchants to reduce costs by 80%.
"Every product company, every brand and every physical retailer on the planet has decided to take e-commerce seriously," said Jeff Richards, Managing Partner at GGV, about why he's invested. This is a "huge category with a very big company that is doing very well".
BigCommerce has built a strong business in the United States and Australia and hopes to use the capital to expand further internationally. He sees an opportunity to strengthen his presence in Europe.
The company has also recently built an integration with Instagram to facilitate purchase by consumers via the app. BigCommerce also has partnerships with PayPal and Google and plans to double cross-platform opportunities.
While BigCommerce's business resembles Demandware, recently acquired by Shopify and Salesforce, CEO Brent Bellm says that while the former is focused on small businesses and the second on big business, BigCommerce's strong point is between the two. It aims to create sites for brands with revenues between $ 1 million and $ 50 million.
Still, BigCommerce's business turnover figures exceed those of targeted customers. Bellm said the company is getting closer to $ 100 million in annualized revenue.
When asked if this meant the company was targeting an IPO, he said that BigCommerce is "on a way where it is possible" and that he thought that financing would be "the last round as a private company".
If the stock market performance of Shopify is an indication, public investors are hot on the space. Shares have increased more than 600% since its IPO in 2015.
Magento competitor, on the other hand, was taken privately after deriving from eBay. Bellm believes that BigCommerce is better positioned to benefit from a growing preference for SaaS business models.