Remember website builders? Well, they are still around and still raising money.
Jimdo, which was originally from Germany but grew most in Asia, has today raised a €25 million minority investment from Spectrum Equity, a growth equity firm. Prior to today it had only raised €500,000 of outside capital.
Since starting in 2007, Jimdo has done well to scale globally, going cross-platform across iOS and Android from 2013, launching in eight languages, with offices in Hamburg, San Francisco, and Tokyo and enabling users to create over 15 million websites.
Founded in Germany in 2007, and still run by Christian Springub, Fridtjof Detzner and Matthias Henze, the company claims to have been profitable since 2009. It now has a team of 200 people across Hamburg, San Francisco, and Tokyo.
Jimdo says they declined to raise funding when it was offered in the past, and it took getting to know Spectrum Equity more than four years to finally take investment.
Back in 2008 German internet services company United Internet acquired a 30% stake in Jimdo, but Jimdo bought back its shares a year later.
It’s a classic move which many entrepreneurs could learn from: Building a great business and raising money on terms most favourable to them at the right time.
This is Spectrum’s first investment in Germany, although the US firm has invested in Prezi, which started outing in Hungary but quickly moved to the US.
Detzner told us: “We’re going to invest in marketing and product and will follow the path we have been so far. It’s not about changing a lot. It’s about accelerating what we are doing.”
He admitted competitor Wix is doing well, but “the whole space is about having a connection to the SMBs.”