Who says European startups can’t raise serious venture capital?
Word came from ividence CEO Eric Didier this morning that 2-year old startup, ividence, closed a $4.2 million Series A financing with A Plus Finance, a Paris-based private equity firm. ividence is a SaaS email ad network that generates traffic to advertisers’ Web sites by using targeted email campaigns.
The company’s proprietary algorithms and innovative email ad server belie the current thinking that email marketing is no longer effective. When we first met ividence in late 2009, the company was already generating revenues of about $100,000 per month. Since that time, Didier has guided the company’s expansion across Europe and into the U.S. The new capital will allow him to move more aggressively to capture the market.
So why was ividence successful raising venture capital when so many European entrepreneurs (or for that matter, U.S. startups) struggle to do the same? See the previous paragraph. ividence has focused on revenue from Day One. The site now manages some 3,000 email campaigns a month generating thousands of leads for clients including Groupon, Citreon, and Dish Network.
ividence intends to use its new cash position to aggressively grow its team. The company expects to add 20 jobs to the business this year.
Thats great news! Eric is a very nice guy and his business generated quite some revenue for such a young company. No surprise an investor wanted to get involved with him.
Getting a (very) good G-Score and a nice ranking at Innovate!100 definitively helped us convincing our VCs. Thanks again Chris (and team) for all the help you provide to promising startups!
Eric