It’s been a big 24 hours for Fab.com. The design-oriented e-commerce site just closed on $105 million in new funding at a reported $600 million valuation — a funding round that has been several months in the making. It’s news that CEO and founder Jason Goldberg likes to joke has given him “105 million new reasons to smile” today. But as Goldberg also acknowledges, it’s a serious time too: Big money brings big responsibility.
So we were pleased to have Goldberg give us a call via Skype from Fab’s New York City headquarters to talk all about the new raise and what it means for Fab’s strategy. You can watch our full interview in the video embedded above, and below are a few of his key points.
A huge focus for Fab going forward will be scaling out its international operations, an effort that will be aided by its new investor London-based VC firm Atomico Ventures. I asked Goldberg if any of its new funding will be put toward acquiring international flash sales companies rather than building them in-house, and he said that while M&A will continue to be an option for Fab it won’t be something it spends its cash on:
“We made two acquisitions already for international expansion… both of those acquisitions were stock transactions, and they were based in equity not based in cash. I would expect to the extent that we do acquisitions in the future, we would still follow that, and be more along the lines of that kind of model.
We invest our cash in building the teams, and investing in teams and the resources the teams need to succeed. But we will look at a build versus buy based on the team. if we feel there is a good team in a market that could become Fab then we will look at it. But we’re not just looking to buy our way in. We’re just as comfortable with building teams as well.”
Fab is the only company that has been able to make Goldberg, a longtime serial entrepreneur, feel ready to settle down. And with the new funding, Goldberg says that he’s looking to make Fab a giant brand on par with the IKEAs of the world:
“As a serial entrepreneur I’ve been starting companies for the last ten years. And until six months ago, I had spent basically most of the past ten years thinking about what company I might be starting next. This is the first time in my life, in my career, that the only thing I think about is this. I’m doing my absolute dream job, and I could see building Fab for 10, 20, 30 years.
I also think we have a special opportunity to build a really significant brand. I always say we’re not building a company, we’re building a brand. We think there’s an opportunity for Fab to be the one of the next great brands on the scale of an IKEA, a Google, a Facebook, an eBay. A brand that people know all around the world.”
Goldberg also talked about retaining a uniform company vibe amidst its booming growth, which is something on which he spends a significant amount of his own time and energy:
“We were 25 people here in New York at this time last year, and we have 400 people globally working on Fab now. The biggest thing for us is, Fab is Fab is Fab, everywhere we operate. That’s the culture, the team, the products on the website, the look and feel, the operations, the customer service.
…Getting this culture right is key to getting the brand right. Our number one thing at Fab is, it’s gotta be real, it’s gotta be authentic. What we say is what we do.”
Fab is on a mission to help people better their lives with design. Fab was founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg, Bradford Shellhammer, Nishith Shah and Deepa Shah in February 2011 and launched on June 9, 2011. Fab’s headquarters are in New York. The company also has offices in Berlin, London and Pune. Over 6 million people around the world use Fab to discover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and to...
Jason Goldberg is the founder and CEO of Fab.com. Prior to founding Fab, Jason was Chief Product Officer at XING AG and before then he was founder and CEO at socialmedian (sold to XING AG) and Jobster. In a prior life, Jason spent 6 years working 100 hours a week for Bill Clinton in the White House. Jason is also an investor in and Board Member at RJ Metrics. Notable prior investments: TweetDeck. Jason is a product guy. He loves...
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