Rearden Commerce, the under-the-radar automated online assistant that helps people organize travel needs and other services, has raised another $40 million in a Series F funding from JPMorgan Chase. This latest round brings Rearden’s total funding up to $240 million since the company’s launch in 2000. JPMorgan Chase is a marketing partner and a pre-existing investor. Greg O’Hara and Rick Smith, both general partners from One Equity Partners, JPMorgan Chase’s private equity fund, will be joining Rearden’s board, although the funding comes from Chase Capital Partners.
Unfortunately, the funding is bittersweet for the company because it coincides with a round of layoffs. Rearden let go roughly 60 employees from a staff of 335 employees (or 18 percent), following a round of layoffs last November of around 10 percent (or 40 employees) of the company’s staff.
At this point, with so much capital invested in the company, the best hope for Rearden investors to see a returns is if it goes public. Rearden is hoping for an IPO, but before it files it wants to hit profitability, and therefore it is cutting its way there. Public investors are going to want to see evidence of sustainable profits and clear revenue growth. Investors generally prefer companies that are hiring to keep up with growth than cutting back to hit their numbers. → Read More
Libersy, an Amsterdam-based startup that we first covered in March 2007, closed a €1.2 Million round of financing this week. Investors include Shamrock Ventures, Value Creation & Company, Reof and Technofonds Flevoland. The company had previously raised €400k in a series of angel rounds. Libersy, along with competitor Genbook, provide an easy, embeddable booking solution for small service providers. It allows small businesses like doctors, dentists, hair salons, plumbers, etc. to take bookings online instead of just over the phone. Libersy takes a small cut of every transaction, and will also launch a services portal to generate new customer leads for participating businesses. It’s a bottom up approach to a huge potential market. But it could take years to build a decent customer base. Meanwhile, Google or others could jump in and grab significant market share. In some ways the business model is similar to the massively funded, IPO-track Rearden Commerce from Silicon Valley. However, Rearded is aggregative major services for business travelers under a single portal. They are beginning to spread out to other services as well, and eventually they will converge with services like Libersy. → Read More
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