The Lower Austrian startup Shopstory, a provider of smart online store marketing software, was able to raise around €2 million in equity. The investment came from aws Gründungsfonds, Calm/Storm, tecnet equity and startup300. In addition to the existing business angels Patrick Pöschl (Co-Founder Scalable Capital), Johannes Braith (Founder Storebox) and Hansi Hansmann, further investors were won: Shopstory shareholders now also include PlanRadar founders Sander van de Rijdt and Ibrahim Imam, Michael Innerebner (ex-VW and Audi manager), Coinpanion Co-Founder Saad Wohlgenannt, Leonard Quack (Co-Founder vergleich.org) and Kai Hesselmann (DealCircle) as well as the Schütz Family Office.
The fresh capital will be used primarily for further expansion in the European market and for the development of the new product, which will be launched in a few weeks. The “Shopstory Flowbuilder”, already announced under the code name “Project Pulse”, will make it possible to completely automate repetitive processes in e-commerce marketing. The individual work steps will be grouped into flows. E-commerce marketers can use both prepared flows and compile their own in a no-code platform using drag & drop.
“Our customers love ready-to-use automations because they allow them to work extremely efficiently. The use of flows brings enormous advantages to both the e-commerce merchant and the supervising marketing agency. In addition, AI integrations will be available, which will once again significantly accelerate marketing processes,” said Sebastian Schwelle, CEO and Co-Founder of Shopstory.
The successful closing of the capital round is noteworthy given the very difficult situation on the venture capital market. “It was a hard piece of work that paid off. The talks ran for several months. Of course, our permanent growth during the fundraising and the reliable achievement of all promised milestones helped a lot. A huge thanks goes to the great Shopstory team, without whom this next important step would not have been possible,” added Schwelle.
Shopstory has been on an impressive growth trajectory since its launch in September 2020, reaching its first million euros in annual recurring revenue in less than 24 months.
“Shopstory has grown at an above-average rate despite the post-Corona trauma in the e-commerce sector and the fall in consumer spending due to inflation. Online stores need to set up their online marketing as efficiently as possible to stay competitive. Shopstory is the perfect partner for exactly this. A seven-figure investment round in the current market situation speaks for the quality of the company and the team,” commented PlanRadar founder Sander van de Rijdt, a new investor in the startup.
“Shopstory is winning new customers every day, and their digital efficiency is increasing rapidly. Building on this, the next growth step is now being taken with the ‘Shopstory Flowbuilder’, in which we are happy to strengthen the passionate team. Especially the operators of medium-sized online stores grow faster with it and scale together with Shopstory. This potential as a “Digital Winner” convinced us,” added Christoph Haimberger, Managing Director of aws Gründungsfonds.
