Exclusive: Staytuned raises $34M to fuel M&A

Staytuned Digital, a developer of e-commerce tools, has raised $34 million in equity and debt to support acquisition and development of software, CEO Serge Kassardjian tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: Online shopping revenue is expected to top $1.5 trillion by 2027, according to Statista, after crossing $1 trillion for the first time in 2022.

• Meanwhile, the e-commerce software application market brought in over $6.3 billion in revenues in 2021, and is projected to grow by more than $1.2 billion by 2025.

Details: Staytuned’s latest financing includes $9 million in equity and $25 million in debt.

• TenOneTen Ventures led the equity portion of the round, with Rembrandt Venture Partners, Hawke Ventures, DragonX Capital, and FJ Labs participating.
• Austin, Texas-based Tacora took the lead on the debt portion of the round.
• Staytuned has raised $46.5 million to date.

What they’re saying: Staytuned focuses on software that sits atop the Shopify ecosystem and beyond, Kassardjian says.

• “They [the investors] all had a thesis that the software in that ecosystem is high margin, high growth, and that we would be the perfect enablers of that,” Kassardjian says.

What’s next: The New York-based company has a robust pipeline of software that it wants to tap as targets or to build.

• Staytuned is sitting on lots of customer data as well, Kassardjian says, which it intends to productize.

Catch up fast: Staytuned has made seven acquisitions so far.

• Last year, it acquired Tabernapp, an app provider that enables automatic discounts on Shopify.
• It also snagged Evey, a Shopify app that allows merchants to sell events directly from their store.
• Kiwi, an app that helps brands create size charts and recommends sizes, was also added to the fold.

Zoom in: “The focus and the themes that we look for going forward and the ones that we will look for, help generate revenue for merchants by doing three things: conversion, retention, and increasing the lifetime value of a brand to the customer,” Kassardjian says.