2 Aussies who met in a chat room created a start-up valued at $500 million

Two guys from Sydney have received an extra $50 million in funding for their ecommerce startup, Bigcommerce, with the company's valuation hitting $500 million.

The Series D funding was led by SoftBank Capital, investors in the outrageously successful Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, with Telstra Ventures, American Express, as well as existing investors General Catalyst and Revolution Growth behind the boost. This brings the company's total funding to $125 million which will allow them to compete in a market dominated by the likes of Amazon and eBay.

Australian founders Eddie Machalaani and Mitch Harper met in a chatroom in 2003, before going on to found Bigcommerce in 2009, a platform that allows small businesses to set up a professional online store in just hours. Due to the company's success over the past five years, the Aussie business partners are now sitting pretty at spot 14 & 15 on BRW's 2014 Young Rich List, with a combined wealth of A$162 million. That should climb by next year, as VentureWire notes, the extra $50 million investment, pushed the company's valuation to more than $500 million.

It all started for Machalaani, 35, and Harper, 32, with the launch of their business Interspire a year after meeting in a corner of the Internet. That company is today known as Bigcommerce. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, opening offices in Austin, Texas and San Francisco, California, to compliment the Sydney, Australia, office.

Earlier this year, Bigcommerce made waves around the world when it used an interesting method to poach employees from some of the tech giants, such as Google and Facebook — free poached eggs sandwiches. 


It is this innovative approach to business that has seen the Aussie company grow rapidly in the ecommerce space. With 55,000 clients processing $4 billion in sales, 370 employees and a total of $125 million in funding, Bigcommerce is not slowing down.

With the extra $50 million injection, Machalaani and Harper plan to invest in product development, aggressively grow sales and marketing, and expand its business to new markets.

“Partnering with SoftBank Capital gives us access to the growing Asian market and opportunities within SoftBank Group companies, including Alibaba, while American Express and Telstra share our passion for helping businesses in the U.S and Australia respectively,” Machaalani said in a statement. “With this new round of funding, we will continue to level the commerce playing field so that every merchant has the opportunity to build a compelling brand and scalable business to effectively compete with the largest players in their industry.”


The Japanese company Softbank, with current and past investments including Alibaba, Yahoo!, BuzzFeed, Criteo, Fitbit, Huffington Post and xAd, is not a bad backer to have onboard. The ecommerce platform Alibaba, 32% owned by Softback, recently became one of the most valuable tech companies in the world after it raised $25 billion from its U.S. initial public offering — the largest opening in history.

Ecommerce is where the money is at. The industry is expected to be worth $2 trillion in sales worldwide in 2015, according to research by Bigcommerce, and these two Aussie entrepreneurs are right in the thick of the boom.