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Indiegogo, the international crowd funding website, plan to use the series B funding to expand their activities.
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Slava Rubin, CEO of Indiegogo, which he co- founded with Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell in 2008, has taken advantage of his adeptness at raising capital for others by raising an additional $40 million for the San Francisco, California based international crowdfunding site.
Indiegogo’s Series B financing was led by investment capital heavyweights, Institutional Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, backed up by existing investors Insight Venture Partners, MHS Capital, Metamorphic Ventures and ff Venture Capital.
Rubin has, in truth, shattered a record in the rapidly expanding world of crowdfunding with the $40 million raised representing the largest single venture capital investment raised by any company involved in crowdfunding to date.
Indiegogo, who were founded in 2008, by Ringelmann, Rubin, and Schell have now raised a total of $56.5 million, having raised $15 million in a Series A funding in June of 2012 from Khosla Ventures as well as their regular investors, Insight Venture Partners. MHS Capital, Metamoprhic Ventures and ff Venture Capital.
Their first round of funding came in September 2011, a $1.5 million Series Seed financing injection, led by Metamorphic Ventures with once again ff Venture Capital, MHS Capital and Steve Schoettler co-founder of Zynga all taking part.
According to a statement released by Rubin, Indiegogo plan to use the latest cash injection to make key hires, expand globally and improve the user experience with a focus on mobile, personalization and trust.
“We’re committed to making Indiegogo the world’s funding engine and giving people access to capital worldwide. With the continued support of our backers, we can rapidly take critical steps to help more and more people find what matters to them, ” CEO and founder Slava Rubin wound up his statement.
Indiegogo have been the stage for more than 190, 000 campaigns in 190 countries in the six years that they have been in existence.
The trio of Danae Ringelmann, Eric Schell and Slava Rubin, met when they all attended the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The trio discovered that they had a common goal, and that was to get involved in the crowdfunding industry, which was, in those days, very much in its early stages.
After graduation, Ringelmann, Schell, and Rubin continued to develop their crowdfunding concept during 2007, with the site being officially launched at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, as they had decided to focus their activities around the film industry.
Despite growing to become one of the most influential crowd funding companies on the market, Minsk, Belarus born Rubin insists that Indiegogo still remains one of the easiest companies to hook up to to raise finance to pursue a business idea.
Their site’s structure is indeed straightforward, allowing fledgling startups to create a web page to present their case for the company, set up an account with PayPal provide information on possible returns on investment, according to varying levels, and then create a social media-based publicity platform that will allow subscribers to market ideas through Facebook, Twitter as well as other leading social media platforms.
Indiegogo takes a 4% fee of all income for campaigns that succeed in getting off the ground. For those companies that fail to take off, then Indiegogo gives them the option of either refunding all money to their contributors, while retaining what they have raised with Indiegogo taking a 9% fee.
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