Zagster, a Cambridge-based provider of private and public bike-sharing programs, announced it has raised a $10 million Series B round led by growth equity firm Edison Partners. At the same time, it said it added Akamai co-founder Jonathan Seelig, former SpaceClaim Corp. CEO Chris Randles and Tom Vander Schaaff of Edison Partners to its board of directors.
Seelig is also the former chairman of the board at Zipcar, the Cambridge-based ridesharing pioneer that went public in 2011 before getting acquired by the rental car company Avis. Zipcar and Zagster announced a partnership deal in 2016.
The funding will be used to grow the company's staff and the reach of its bike-sharing programs.
The new money and board members are coming in after Zagster had a big 2016. The startup increased the number of implemented programs by 300 percent to 140 sites across 30 states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada, with the number of deployed bikes growing by 400 percent. It also grew its staff to 50. Beyond that, Zagster opened a satellite office in San Francisco, relocated to a larger headquarters in Cambridge and formed the previously mentioned partnership with Zipcar.
"I believe Zagster can become one of the next iconic Boston-based high-growth, disruptive companies," Seelig, former chairman of Zipcar, said in a statement. "The company is well-positioned to grow the bike-sharing market by delivering programs in hundreds of communities where others can't -- or won't -- enabling them to continue to grow rapidly in the coming years."
