Dec 31, 2015 | By Kira
StartupJuncture’s annual ranking of Dutch startup/scaleup deals has revealed that 3D print group Shapeways has come in third place amongst 150 other young innovative companies in 2015, having raised US$30.5 million (€27.2m) in Series D funding during the second quarter. The report also revealed that as a whole, Dutch startups and scaleups managed to raise nearly US$479 million (€428m) in capital and equity crowdfunding investments this year, down US$76.5 million (€70m) from 2014. Though the total amount of money may be lower, the number of investments has doubled to 150, indicating an increasingly positive attitude towards startup companies, a key class of 3D printing developers, manufacturers and service providers.
Peter Weijmarshausen, CEO and Co-Founder, Shapeways.
StartupJuncture’s annual report combines all publicly available funding news about Dutch startups in order to provide insights into the Dutch funding situation, including who is investing, what types of companies are fundable in the Netherlands, and how much startups can expect to raise. Although Shapeways was founded in 2007 and thus is slightly older than what most would consider within the realm of a ‘startup’, the report indicates that since the goal is to provide insight for startups in all phases, they apply a “broad definition of ‘startup’” that includes early startup deals from business angles up until large investments in grown-up scaleups. 3D printing leader Shapeways thus belongs to the latter category.
As for the top five Dutch startup deals of 2015, online auction website Catawiki managed to raise the most money this year, with investments of €75m, while payment system Ayden came in second place. IT security site HackerOne and data storage service WeTransfer rounded out the top five after Shapeways.
As reported back in June 2015, Shapeways, a spinout of electronics conglomerate Philips, closed a US$30.5 million Series D funding round led by primary investor INKEF Capital, a Dutch venture capital firm. The VC was further infused by existing Shapeways investors (Andreesen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures and Lux Capital), as well as Hewlett Packard Ventures and Presidio Ventures, the investment arm of Tokyo-based Sumitomo Corporation. Earlier funding rounds had resulted in investments of around US$40 million.
According to Shapeways Co-Founder Peter Wiejmarshausen, the $30 million boost would go towards helping Shapeways “realize their vision of reimagining mass manufacturing.” The ‘Amazon of 3D printing’ has become one of the largest 3D printing marketplaces, communities, and service bureaus in the world, allowing over 620,000 3D printing enthusiasts the ability to either upload files or select from their database of over 2.5 milllion 3D printable files, and have high-quality models 3D printed on demand. Originally founded in Eindhoven, the company is how headquartered in Manhattan, and has factories and offices in Long Island City, Seattle, and the Netherlands.
In addition to their recent partnership with HP, Shapeways has also tied itself to several other giants within the tech and 3D printing industries by joining the 3MF Consortium, an initiative to develop a new, universal 3D printing file format.
Shapeways was not the only Dutch 3D printing startup to make the list of 2015 deals. LuXeXcel, developer of 3D printed optics, raised US$4.4 million (€4m) in Series A funding, while further down the list, Mundo 3D Printing raised just over US$300,000. Meanwhile, the entire list of 150 companies contains startups from all sectors, including medtech, software, data, retail, travel, edtech, and of course, 3D printing.
Additional findings from StartupJunction’s report indicate that, although over 60% of investments came from Dutch sources, for later stage rounds (a.k.a larger investments), “the big money is coming from abroad.” They also concluded that 2015 was “the year of sustained success for crowdfunding platforms and the convertible note or equity crowdfunding,” having found that 15 deals were made possible through crowdfunding platforms such as Leapfunder, OnePlanetCrowd and Sybmid (the ranking does not include pre-sales crowdfunding suchas Kickstarter). Given the number of 3D printed-related crowdfunded projects that we report on, this is very promising news for any up-and-coming startups that, thanks to the power of the people, just might be the next big thing in 3D printing. The full list of Dutch startup/scaleup deals in 2015 can be found here.
Posted in 3D Printer Company
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