AppDirect raised $35 million in a fresh round of financing for its service selling a white-label marketplace for business applications in the cloud.
Led by Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, the new financing will be used to expand the company’s international presence and continue its product development. Existing investors, including iNovia Capital and Foundry Group, also participated.
Founded in 2009, the company sells its online services marketplace as an unbranded platform to companies like Staples, Comcast, and AT&T, enabling them to then sell software as a service applications through to small and medium-sized businesses.
“For the developer, it’s easy to integrate into one standard platform and distribute across the board [and] businesses see value in centralizing around a single platform,” said AppDirect’s chief executive Daniel Saks. “We sit at the intersection of the developers and the businesses by enabling distribution.”
The San Francisco-based company generates revenue from a monthly subscription service that customers like AT&T and Comcast pay for its application platform and through a revenue share with applications that are accessed through its white-label service, according to Saks.
Given the growth of companies selling software as a service, AppDirect saw significant demand from investors for its latest fundraising. The company closed its latest Series C round within six weeks of launching its fundraising efforts, Saks said.
Part of the demand was based on the company’s growth, which has led to revenues of $9 million in 2013, according to Saks.
Now that the company’s round has closed, AppDirect is focused on growth in Europe and Latin America. The company is in the process of establishing an office in Munich, in addition to locations in Montreal, San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., Ottawa, and London.
The company is also on the hunt for new acquisitions, building off of its last two purchases. In 2012 it bought jBilling, a billing service for cloud applications. And last year it acquired StandingCloud, which sells a service packaging applications for cloud services, in a September 2013 acquisition.
Both acquisitions continue to operate as independent brands, while AppDirect has folded their technologies into its own suite of services, Saks said.
Given the company’s new cash position, additional acquisitions may also be in the cards. “The categories that we always look at are billing, identity management and security, and finally data management,” said Saks.
Photo via Flickr user Megan McCormick