Jan
14
2014
15 million US dollars are raised by WP engine from North Bridge Growth Equity to spend on product development and growth acceleration
WP engine which is one of the leading hosting providers that particularize in hosting Wordpress websites declared that it has collected 15 millions dollars from North Bridge Growth Equity to boost up growth and enhance product development.
According to Heather Brunner, the company's CEO, the latest round of funding has increased the company's funding to 18.2 million dollars. Brunner stated that even though the company has decent amount of earlier funding, but it made a decision to go ahead with further fund raising to expand its services rapidly. The company expects to double the number of its current 100 employees towards the end of this year. WP engine also plans to set up its first international office in Europe at the beginning of the year 2015. Currently, WP engine owns offices in San Francisco and Austin.
Right from its inception, the company is growing about 25 percent every quarterly, and has about 14, 0000 clients who hosts more than 120000 unique wordpress websites and domains on the company's platform. These Wordpress sites pay the host for about 36 million unique visitors each day. As per the data released by the company, it earned 3 times revenue last year compared to the previous year, and expects to double its profits in the current year.
Due to its speedy growth, venture capital firms are showing a lot of inbound interest in WP engine. After assessing 20 offers, the company made a decision on North Bridge, according to Brunner. Keen interest was shown by the executive team to find a good fit between WP engine and the VC.
North Bridge was considered fit simply because its portfolio contains numerous companies with open source specialization. Matthew Blodgett, a partner at North Bridge, was included to the board by the company. Brunner stated that Blodgett will play a vital role in optimizing company's growth.
Although WP engine raised funds for acquisitions recently, but it is not planning on any new funding. Last week, the company acquired Crowd Favorite's hosting business; however, the deal was particularly user acquisition specific instead of exchange of technologies and workers.
In the future, WP engine plans to develop various tools for its customers, and also bring certain tools it currently uses for users, according to Brunner. However, she didn't give much information about which tools were planned by the company. Still, Brunner stated that the company plans to concentrate on making Wordpress more secure, faster and more scalable.