BigCommerce, a company that provides e-commerce software to online retailers and merchants, has raised an additional $20 million in new funding from General Catalyst Partners and Mike Maples’ FLOODGATE. This brings the company’s total funding to $35 million.
Launched in 2009, Bigcommerce provides a comprehensive SaaS for retailers and merchants to manage e-commerce online. Bigcommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO.
Features include multi-channel retailing, automated email marketing, inventory control, an online storefront, and more. The company, which has 30,000 clients and is profitable, also launched an application for merchants to list inventory on Facebook.
For Bigcommerce, the next generation of the company’s product lies in its platform play, explains co-founder Eddie Machaalani. Earlier this year, Bigcommerce set up a $2 million fund for developers that aims to support third-party developers for submitting their integration and application ideas for Web, mobile or desktop apps that make use of the Bigcommerce API. Bigcommerce currently integrates with more than 100 applications, including Facebook, eBay, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, SurveyMonkey and more.
Currently, there are 500 startups who have integrated Bigcommerce’s API, and the company’s goal is to bring this up to 2,000 startups by the end of 2013. Bigcommerce will also be aggressively hiring; and plans to expand from 150 employees to three to four hundred staffers.
“We want to be synonymous with e-commerce for SMBs,” says co-founder Mitch Harper. Part of that goal will involve raising brand awareness for the company, he adds.
Last year, Bigcommerce doubled revenue and is in-line to see the same growth for next year. As Harper and Machaalani explain, the company’s goal isn’t just to help small businesses get their stores up and running, but also to help them implement tools like SEO, and online marketing to drive traffic and sales.