Old Bags Raises $34M in Equity, Debt to Build ‘Sales Force Suite for E-Commerce’

Staytuned Digital has $34 million in new equity and debt to continue developing a suite of software for e-commerce brands.

“E-commerce has completely changed and is moving to these emerging platforms, Shopify being the biggest,” he said. “We’re buying and building software around the Shopify ecosystem in the zone.”

The software company focuses on Shopify merchants and acquires and builds e-commerce applications. It’s got seven apps so far and is working with more than 28,000 customers, co-founder Serge Kasardjian told TechCrunch.

While Kasardjian declined to disclose revenue growth, the company said it was EBITDA positive in the fourth quarter.

The new investment includes $9 million in equity and an option to take up to $25 million more in debt, Kasardjian said. To date, the company has raised $46.5 million in a combination of equity and debt.

Investors in the new round include TenOneTen, Rembrandt VC, Hawke Ventures, DragonX, FJ Labs, Interlace, Riverpark Ventures, Comma Capital, Kotti Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Jason Finger and the Angel Investor Group. Tacora Capital led the debt fund.

TechCrunch In 2019, the company profiled its focus on video. Kasardjian says that 11 months after starting the company, he and co-founder Randy Jimenez realized the product wasn’t working and made a “hard pivot.”

“We went to our board and told them that we burned a very small amount of capital and told them that it was half a million or more,” Kasardjian said. “All of our investors were like, ‘We’ve invested in you and we believe in you.’ So we went back to the drawing board and it was a successful pivot. We brought in a whole new set of investors, and each valuation got higher and higher.”

Lauralyn Drury joined the founding team to help build the products and scale the strategy.

The new funding will allow Staytuned to acquire more apps — Kasardjian said there’s a long pipeline of potential acquisitions — hire more engineers and accelerate.

“Software is extremely high margin and will grow faster than Shopify, and Shopify will grow faster than the e-commerce ecosystem,” Kassardjian said. “So if we buy and build enough software, we can have the biggest hub of brands and merchants using the software that will drive e-commerce in the future.”