When Cart.com Inc. secured $98 million in new venture capital funding last summer, several interested investors weren't yet ready to get in on the deal.
Since then, Cart has made two acquisitions and moved its headquarters to Austin from Houston. Now venture firms are thirsty to own a share of the booming e-commerce company.
The startup announced Feb. 3 it has raised $240 million in additional venture and debt funding, bringing the young company's total funding to $380 million. And it added several new firms to its capitalization table who were interested in joining the August series B round but needed more time.
"Those investors approached us very quickly after that round was done, wanting to know if we would be amenable to doing a follow on round shortly thereafter, which is how the round came together so quickly," said Frank Parker, who joined the company as chief financial officer in November.
The company wouldn't divulge the equity/debt funding split, but noted it wasn't heavily weighted toward either. Multi-family venture capital firm Legacy Knight Capital Partners, which has offices in Dallas and Houston, led the venture portion of the round. Other VCs included funds held by banking giants such as Citi Ventures and Visa.
On the debt side, the funding came from J.P. Morgan and TriplePoint Capital. The company declined to share its valuation.
Cart.com, founded in late 2020 by CEO Omair Tariq and Jim Jacobsen, has developed what it calls an e-commerce-as-a-service platform that helps businesses develop and scale online sales via online stores, digital marketing, fulfillment, payment services and analytics.
The company has made 10 acquisitions already. One of its earliest deals came in July when it acquired Austin-based fulfillment and third-party logistics firm Sauceda Industries, which was founded by Jay B. Sauceda in 2013. The company had big-name clients, as it has helped brands such as Bill Murray's William Murray Golf apparel brand, the Grocery Family program for Siete Foods and TV show Austin City Limits.
That deal helped transform Cart in its early days by integrating Sauceda's company culture initiatives and boosting fulfillment capabilities.
"It's important for us when when we talk about competing against the large players in the market not to just compete with them on scale, but also scale the way that we treat people," said Sauceda, who is head of corporate communications and creative direction at Cart.
Cart is poised to continue growing via acquisition.
"A lot of the investment that we're gonna' be making over the next couple of years will be continuing to build out on our long-term strategy and strengthening the acquisitions and integration of acquisitions into the greater Cart ecosystem," Sauceda said. "One big area that we did have a large acquisition recently was in the fulfillment space. And we see it as being critically important for the success of the merchants' growth, for them to have a strong relationship with their fulfillment provider. And as such, our investments on the logistic side will continue internally as we grow our network and increase the footprint that we have across the United States."
At the time of its HQ move, Cart had about 400 employees, including about 150 in Austin. Executives expect the headcount to grow to about 1,000 employees and are accelerating the pace of hiring, Parker said, noting they are hiring remotely but also focused on growing the Austin team.
"I think Austin's a really important market for us," he said. "Obviously the city has grown exponentially, it's very entrepreneurial and the talent pool is very deep."
Inside Cart.com's new Austin headquarters office
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