OTTAWA, ONTARIO — December 12, 2013 — Shopify, the leading ecommerce and retail platform used by over 80,000 businesses today announced the closing of a $100 million Series C investment. The investment is led by OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Georgian Partners, and Felicis Ventures. The new round of funding will help the company fully expand their recently launched offline retail offering.
Since Shopify’s founding in 2006, the company has been focused making it easy for anyone to create a beautiful and powerful online store. Now, Shopify is on the cusp of doing the same in the physical retail world.
“Shopify began as an easy way to sell products online. We used our previous funding rounds to expand into new areas that enriched our product and helped our merchants, like payments and mobile,” said Tobias Lütke, Founder and CEO, Shopify. “This new round of funding will help us further expand into physical retail with Shopify POS, so our merchants can easily sell their products anywhere at any time.”
“In the past few years Shopify has democratized online retail by delivering the easiest and most robust platform to businesses looking to sell a product. They have demonstrated that they truly understand the future of commerce, and we are very excited to see them conquer the offline retail world as well,” said Jim Orlando, Managing Director at OMERS Ventures.
By providing easy, hassle-free ways to sell in-store and online, Shopify has helped shift the power of commerce from large retailers into the hands of entrepreneurs and smaller merchants. In the week surrounding this past Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Shopify stores sold over $100 million in products. Furthermore, research published by Deepfield shows that on Cyber Monday Shopify stores saw more online traffic than Walmart, Best Buy and Target.
“Shopify has emerged as a fast-growing leader in a large, global market, and is seeing accelerated adoption,” said Richard Wells, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners. “The company’s expansion into offline commerce, with Shopify POS further increases their opportunity with all retail merchants. Shopify has a bright future and we’re excited to be part of it.”
The Series C funding adds to the $22 million of Series A and B funding received in 2010 and 2011.
OMERS Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of OMERS, one of Canada’s largest pension funds with almost $61 billion in net assets. It is an initiative of OMERS Strategic Investments (OSI), an investment entity with a mandate to build long-term strategic relationships with like-minded partners. As both an institutional angel investor and a later-stage investor, OMERS Ventures is looking for successful companies with significant growth potential and market opportunities. We are seeking like-minded partners with a shared vision of building a vibrant and successful knowledge economy. For more information, visit www.omersventures.com.
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global private equity and venture capital firm investing in software, ecommerce, Internet, and data-services companies. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $7.6 billion and made more than 190 investments worldwide. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives who are driving change in their industries. Insight provides them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. For more information, visitwww.insightpartners.com.
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage, hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, Cambridge, New York, Mumbai, Bangalore, Herzliya and Sao Paolo. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, Skype, Shopify, CornerstoneOnDemand, Pinterest, Box and Twilio. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public – last year alone BVP had 5 IPOs, 7 M&A exits, and 20 new investments. For more information, visitwww.bvp.com.
FirstMark Capital is an early stage venture capital firm based in New York City. Our mission is to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs who are changing the world by solving meaningful problems. We have built a deeply engaged community among the extraordinary teams in our network to spread ideas and opportunities. We are privileged to work alongside the founders of remarkable businesses like Pinterest, Shopify, Lumosity, Aereo, TapAd, Riot Games, and dozens more. For more information, visitwww.firstmarkcap.com.
Georgian Partners is a growth equity firm investing in expansion stage Enterprise Software, Internet and Information companies that are exploiting Applied Analytics: the convergence of Cloud-based business solutions, Big Data, and broad Information Rights. Founded by successful entrepreneurs and technology executives, Georgian Partners leverages our global software expertise to be able to directly impact the success of companies. For more information, visit www.georgianpartners.com.
Founded in 2006, Felicis Ventures is a boutique venture firm backing the world’s iconic companies and founders. Felicis Ventures’ portfolio encompasses over 90 companies including Clearslide, Inkling, Practice Fusion, Rovio, and Shopify. Since its inception, 47 Felicis portfolio companies including Meraki, Climate Corporation and Wildfire have been acquired by notable companies like Cisco, Google, Monsanto, Facebook and Twitter. Felicis Ventures is based in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit www.felicis.com.