INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce has completed a big round of funding.The growth-stage startup, which powers e-commerce sites for Sony,
Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $64 million to accelerate its business
The investment was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital
And it brings BigCommerce’s total raised to more than $200 million since it was founded in 2009.BigCommerce has developed a template for
its customers to launch websites with manageable shipping and payments tracking. It also makes it easy to cross-sell on Amazon, eBay and
The company claims it is able to help e-tailers cut down on costs by as much as 80 percent.“Every product company, brand company, physical
retailer on the planet has decided they need to get serious about e-commerce,” said Jeff Richards, managing partner at GGV about why
It’s a “huge category with a very big business that’s doing extremely well.”BigCommerce has built a robust business in the United
States and Australia, and hopes to use the capital to expand further internationally
It sees an opportunity to build out its presence in Europe.The company also recently built an integration with Instagram to make it easier
for consumers to purchase directly via the app. BigCommerce also has partnerships with PayPal and Google and plans to double down on
cross-platform opportunities.While BigCommerce’s business resembles Shopify and Salesforce’s recently purchased Demandware, CEO Brent
Bellm says that while the former focuses on small businesses and the latter targets large enterprises, BigCommerce’s sweet spot is
It aims to build sites for brands with between $1 million and $50 million in revenue.Yet BigCommerce’s own revenue numbers exceed that of
the clients it is targeting
Bellm said the company is approaching $100 million in annualized revenue.When asked about whether that meant the company is targeting an
IPO, he said that BigCommerce is “on a track where that’s possible” and that he believed this financing would be “the last round as
a private company.”If Shopify’s stock performance is any indication, public investors are hot on the space
Shares have gone up more than 600 percent since its IPO in 2015.Competitor Magento, on the other hand, was taken private after spinning off
from eBay. Bellm believes that BigCommerce is better positioned to take advantage of a growing preference for SaaS business models.
