OLX just raised $13.5 million

April 11, 2008   

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OLX just raised another $13.5 million from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital. This brings the total raised to $23.5 million as we had raised $10 million in September 2006 from the same VCs and various angels.

My two favorite VCs – Joel Cutler and Jeremy Levine, from General Catalyst and Bessemer Venture Partners respectively, remain on the board alongside my co-founder Alec Oxenford and myself.

We thought long and hard about whether we should raise more cash. In the end, in light of our ambitions and the insurance it buys in a probable economic downturn, we felt that raising more cash was the best solution despite the incremental dilution and liquidation preference.

We will use the funds to:

  • Build the best site in the market
  • Further our global deployment (we are currently in 40 countries in 15 languages)
  • Acquire more sites (we already acquired Mundoanuncio.com, Freestreet.it, Freeads.ru and invested in Edeng.cn)
  • Continue our aggressive marketing campaign

We intend to be extremely careful in how we spend the money to make sure that it lasts us until profitability.

We realize we remain a startup and need to keep our low cost and nimble startup culture. We are still at the beginning of a long road that will hopefully lead to the creation of the best free classified site in the world and allow us to make a difference in the life of our customers.

You can also read a TechCrunch article on the fund raising at:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/craigslist-competitor-olx-raises-135m/

  • Congrats! Now you should go after the domain Clasificados.com or ClasificadosOnline.com to fit into the US hispanic and Puertorican market!

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  • congrats! It’s a very important news for all of us startuppers in the classifieds market (www.bakeca.it). Best luck for your business and now… focus and execution! Paolo

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  • Fabrice,

    Well done on the funding and execution. You’ve picked a sector which deceptively looks very easy, but is actually very difficult for many subtle reasons.

    Get in touch sometime if you’re ever in Barcelona.

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  • congrats fabrice,

    Are you monetizing right now through the google Adsense? Quick question, in order to raise a second round, are VCs looking more at growth in revenue or growth in users (revenue will come later) in the current market ?

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  • Fabrice,
    Congratulations! I keep suggesting to all my friends and acquatices your Porfolio of companies. Needless to say why…

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  • Congrats from me as well. Although I am not a fan of VCs, I admit that sometimes they are a must. I’ll see how well we will be able to compete with OLX and the other 3-4 big players with our newly launched global / local classified site http://www.kugli.com and very little private funding but with 8 years of Internet background. Good luck to everyone!

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