stay tuned raised $34 million to further develop a software suite for e-commerce brands toward what co-founder Serge Kassardjian described as "the Salesforce suite for e-commerce stores."
“Ecommerce has completely changed and is moving towards these emerging platforms, with Shopify being the biggest,” he said. "In turn, we're buying and building software that's built around the Shopify ecosystem."
The software company focuses on Shopify merchants and acquires and builds eCommerce applications. It has purchased seven apps so far and is working with more than 28,000 clients, Kassardjian said.
While Kassardjian declined to disclose revenue growth, he did say the company posted positive EBITDA in the fourth quarter.
The new investment includes $9 million in equity and $25 million in debt, with an option to take up to $25 million more, Kassardjian said. To date, the company has raised $46,5 million in a combination of equity and debt.
Investors in the new round include TenOneTen, Rembrandt VC, Hawke Ventures, DragonX, FJ Labs, Interlace, Riverpark Ventures, Comma Capital, Kotti Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Jason Finger, and a group of personal investors. Tacora Capital led the financing of the debt.
Kassardjian said that 11 months into starting the company, he and co-founder Randy Jimenez realized the product wasn't working and took "a sharp turn."
“We went to our board and told them that we had burned very little capital, say half a million or so,” Kassardjian said. “All of our investors were saying, 'We invest in you and we believe in you.' So we went back to the drawing board and this was a successful twist. We also brought in a whole new set of investors, and each valuation has been higher and higher.”
Lauralynn Drury has since joined the founding team to help build the products and scale the strategy.
The new funding will allow Staytuned to acquire more apps. Kassardjian said there are a host of potential applications to acquire, hire additional engineers and scale faster.
“The software is very high margin and growing faster than Shopify, while Shopify is growing faster than the eCommerce ecosystem,” Kassardjian said. "So if we buy and build enough software, we can have the largest hub of brands and merchants using the software, which will drive e-commerce in the future."
