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Recent fund raise
What does your company do? Martingale Internet Technologies believes that the dominance eBay has enjoyed in recent years is giving way to web 2.0 specialist auction sites with strong community elements. Over the last three years its team has built category killer software to specifically target large communities of collectors allowing it to compete with eBay in a number of their markets. Revenues come from P2P sales, insurance commissions and advertising. How much money were you looking for? £280,000 What did you need the money for? Increasing development resources and working capital up to break-even How much have you managed to raise? We have raised £340,000 in our first close. Shareholder approved another closing on 5th of March with up to £70,000 on the same terms. The additional funds will be deployed to develop our software suite faster as well as lengthen our runway. Who has invested? Investors include both existing non-executive directors and 12 new investors. Most of the new investors are founders or early backers of successful eCommerce businesses. How long did it take you to raise the funds? We tried to raise funding in mid 2009 but did not succeed, partly due to the then prevailing investment climate, partly because the company was too early stage. The management recapitalised the business at the time and started to fundraise again in Q4 of last year. Our first close was on the 25th of January.
Where is the business at now? We are growing Toy Collector's traffic month-by-month at around 10% and have now concluded the acquisition of some American sites so that overall we now have critical mass to launch our marketplace early in Q2 of this year. What are your future plans for the business? Become the marketplace of choice for the £6 billion vintage and collectible toy market and create the next few marketplaces (comics, coins, sporting memorabilia etc.) Do you have any advice for other people looking to raise funding? Decide if you can live with the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur and work hard to prove your business concept. Go for funding as late as possible but do test your investment proposition against as many “friendly” investors or business executives as you know (or can get to know for this purpose).
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