The News

mydeco secures significant investment to fund international launch

03/09/2008

LONDON, UK (September 1, 2008) – mydeco, the online intermediary for the home design market, today announced that it has secured £7.35M in its second round of funding. Sofinnova Partners, one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms, led the round in which other participants included SRPE, Amadeus Capital Partners and Burda Cross Media. This investment follows a seed round last year led by SPARK Ventures (who remain a major shareholder) and takes total funding to date to over £12.5M.

Brent Hoberman, mydeco’s Executive Chairman commented: "We are delighted to have attracted a top quality investor group in which each individual firm brings real strategic value to the business and whose mix of nationalities reflects our own international ambitions. The closure of this latest financing round validates our achievements to date and will support the full commercial launch of the business later this year."

Alain Rodermann, Partner at Sofinnova Partners, added: "We believe mydeco has the potential to become a category killer in the home design industry. We are delighted to be backing a world class team with the vision and expertise and ambition to establish a global leadership."

mydeco aims to become the leading marketplace for consumers and suppliers of home design and furnishing, a sector estimated to represent over 0 billion of annual spending in the US and Europe but whose online potential has been barely tapped. The company’s innovative technology revolutionises the shopping experience for consumers, allowing them to browse, compare and buy products from hundreds of top quality and specialist retailers. Since beta launch in the UK in February 2008 the site has attracted over 1.5m visitors.

Close Brothers advised mydeco on the transaction.

 

About mydeco
mydeco was conceived and founded in 2007 by the management team behind lastminute.com, one of Europe’s most successful ever online businesses. mydeco’s highly functional website, beta-launched in the UK in February 2008, has won huge public acclaim for its blend of search aggregation, interactive planning and visualisation tools and social networking capability. The business has signed partnerships with top retailers such as Heal’s, John Lewis and Lombok, while leading figures in the design world including Sir Terence Conran and Philippe Starck have joined the company’s Design Board. mydeco is the trading name of By Design (UK) Limited.

About Sofinnova Partners
Founded in Paris in 1972, Sofinnova Partners is one of Europe’s leading independent venture capital firms. With more than €1b under management, Sofinnova Partners invests in early stage companies and corporate spin-offs in the technology and life sciences sectors – companies that have the potential to become tomorrow’s global leaders. We have supported entrepreneurs in over 460 ventures throughout Europe and the United States, putting our expertise and international experience to work on their behalf. The companies in our portfolio also benefit from our collaborative relationships with an international syndicate of co-investors, including Sofinnova Ventures, our sister firm in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.sofinnova.fr.

About SRPE
SRPE is a private equity and venture capital firm dedicated to working with talented entrepreneurs who operate in high-growth sectors. The firm focuses on teamwork while adopting an active, high-value approach to growing its portfolio companies. Our team combines a deep understanding of the drivers of company growth and a global network to create lasting value in the companies we back. SRPE invests in a range of sectors which include innovative consumer goods and services, new media, and medical services and technologies. For more information, visit the website at www.srpe.co.uk.

About Burda Cross Media
Burda Cross Media, led by boardmember Christiane zu Salm, is the strategic and operational platform for Hubert Burda Media’s cross media business. The division creates vertical market-places for Burda brands and partners and develops the future publishing-related digital business. Burda Cross Media contains also corporate communications, umbrella brand marketing and the research & development division.

About Amadeus
Amadeus is one of Europe’s leadingtechnology investors. Since its inception in 1997, the firm has backed over 70 companies covering computer hardware and software, mobile and fixed communications technologies, medical technologies and clean technologies. Investments include Celltick, the global market leader in mobile idle screen marketing, CSR, producing single chip bluetooth radios for short range connections and floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2004, Optos, a manufacturer of laser retinal scanners and floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2006, Solexa, the developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged with Illumina Inc., which is quoted on NASDAQ, and Transmode, the European market leader in metro data transport systems. For more information about Amadeus visit www.amadeuscapital.com.