Tue, 05/10/16, 03:00:00 PM
Capital will be used to expand merchant customer base, drive product innovation and expand globally
AUSTIN, Texas — May 10, 2016 — BigCommerce, the leading ecommerce platform for fast-growing brands, today announced that it closed a $30 million round of funding led by GGV Capital with participation from existing investors including General Catalyst, Revolution Growth, SoftBank Capital, Tenaya, Split Rock, Telstra Ventures and American Express Ventures.
BigCommerce is a leading SaaS provider for merchants running an online business, and has processed more than $9 billion in sales through its platform. Each month, thousands of merchants set up shop on BigCommerce, and more than 1,000 partners offer their software and services on the BigCommerce Marketplace. According to Morgan Stanley research, the ecommerce software platform addressable market is more than $10 billion annually with 10 million merchants in Western markets and 46 million globally. Additionally, Gartner reports that the market for cloud ecommerce enablement software and services reached $7.7 billion in 2015, and is expected to grow to $10 billion in 2018.
“BigCommerce is benefitting from the retail industry shifting online, with every small, mid-sized and large merchant in the world seeking to gain a piece of the $1 trillion ecommerce market,” said Brent Bellm, CEO of BigCommerce. “This new financing follows on the successful launch of several new products, our partnerships with major players in ecommerce like eBay and Square, and our successful expansion into the midmarket.”
The round was led by GGV Capital, a Silicon Valley and China-based investment firm with a major focus on both software and ecommerce, having also backed companies like Alibaba, Houzz, Square, Slack and Domo. Managing partner at GGV Capital Jeff Richards will join the BigCommerce board of directors. The round also included participation from all existing investors, including Stephan Schambach, founder and former chairman of Demandware.
“We believe we are still in the early innings of a massive global shift from offline to online retail, with mobile and younger demographics driving the trend,” said Jeff Richards. “BigCommerce and its competitors have brought hundreds of thousands of merchants online in the past few years, but there are millions left to come online – and today’s shopper shops online first.”
The funding follows several milestones for the company during the last 12 months:
Brent Bellm joined as CEO. Bellm was formerly COO of Homeaway, a leading online travel platform that was acquired by Expedia for $3.8 billion. Prior to Homeaway, Bellm was with eBay, PayPal and McKinsey.
Leading brands have joined the BigCommerce platform, including category-leading companies such as Camelbak and Toyota. Additionally, since it was launched in May 2015, thousands of mid-market brands have adopted BigCommerce Enterprise to power their online businesses.
Following the one year anniversary of its Zing acquisition in April 2015, the company has successfully integrated its point of sale, multichannel and payment technology with best-in-class commerce partners including Square, eBay, Facebook and Pinterest, and shipped 130 new features to customers during the past 12 months.
In Q1, BigCommerce launched the Stencil development framework and a suite of new themes, allowing developers and customers greater flexibility and customization than ever before to build beautiful, intuitive stores on the platform. Since launch, hundreds of retailers have relaunched their store with a new theme hosted within the Stencil development environment, including Saint Heron by Solange Knowles and GolfEtail.
BigCommerce opened two new offices during 2015, including an expanded presence in San Francisco and a second office in Austin, to house the expanding product and engineering teams.
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