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BigCommerce raises $64 million to build e-commerce sites

Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce has completed a big round of funding.

The growth stage startup, which builds 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 over $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 Facebook. The company claims it is able to help e-tailers cut down on costs by as much as 80%.

“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 he’s invested. 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 somewhere in between. 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 that 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 over 600% 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.



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