Popular Q&A platform Quora announces that it has raised $85 million, which comes after Quora’s last round of $80 million three years ago and $235 million to date. This is good news, as it boasts over 190 million monthly unique visitors. After the rather public donation issues Wikipedia faced earlier this year, it is encouraging to see that investors still pace a high value on online advice and education. The $85 million will be used to expand the platform internationally, grow business strategy and make new hires to improve machine learning abilities. The last funding round, Quora was valued at $900 million, which poses the question of an IPO?
This week in listings, there is a fantastic opportunity to acquire a nine year old digital product business with a unique and highly scalable business model. The business sells some of the highest-quality content / courses available and has c.500K customers. With a team already in place, a new owner can focus solely on business expansion within this lucrative and growing space. Please request a prospectus here. A new listing this week is a digital product business in the self-help and improvement industry, driving over 2.2 million visitors. See the live deals under Deal Highlights.
In event news, LTVConf concluded this week with an on stage appearance from founder Thomas Smale. Watch out for Thomas’ recording of his talk on how to grow a sellable SaaS business. He is currently at a private digital investor event Atlanta, through till this weekend. There’s still time to set a meeting with him in Atlanta, so let us know!
Continue to the news briefs below to read more about the Amazon and eBay VAT controversy, Shopify’s card reader and another ChartMogul integration.
Deal Highlights
Digital Products – Self-Help & Improvement – $21K gross/mo
- Traffic from over 2.2 million visitors
- Revenues diversified across wide range of products
- High-quality content
- Established brand
- Growing niche
Yearly net profit: $158,000
Asking price: $356,000
Digital Products – Education Courses – $168K gross/mo
- Complete coding education ecosystem, including courses, hosting, certifications, and programming exercises
- 500K past and present coding students
- c.30% of students take two or more classes
- 4 full-time employees remaining post-sale
- High net margins of 83%
Yearly net profit: $1,649,000
Asking price: $4,800,000
In the News…
Amazon and eBay Sellers Cause Britain 1 Billion Pounds
Due to a fraud or error by Amazon and eBay sellers, Britain is losing up to 1 billion pounds a year in value added tax (VAT). The National Audit Office (NAO) reports that sellers involved are based in China and Amazon and eBay have not banned sellers that were disobeying VAT rules, even after the marketplaces were informed of non-compliance.
NAO has implemented new rules to help remedy the situation, that are aimed at making operators of marketplaces liable for VAT not paid by seller identified to the operator as non-compliant.
For U.S. sellers, you should make sure you are complying to all tax rules as Amazon and eBay are cracking down.
Shopify Makes a Card Reader
Shopify enters the world of internet of things (IoT) by releasing its first hardware product. A product that you might not expect – a card reader. The card reader made its debut appearance at Shopify’s Unite developer conference this week. Three years ago, Shopify noticed that many of its online sellers eventually also move offline through pop-up shops or local small stores.
Shopify VP of Product Satish Kanwar said, “What we’ve seen is the evolution of the retail store as a place that was primarily a first channel for someone, to being a great experiential marketing strategy for people, and just a necessary part of the growth and evolution of any retail brand, whether you started online first or not.”
As retail becomes more fluid between offline and online because offline sellers are recognizing opportunity in the online space, sellers are looking for solutions for seamless transactions.
ChartMogul + Zuora Integration
This week, ChartMogul announced a Zuora integration to its customers. The integration allows users to import and sync data into ChartMogul. Along with the announcement, ChartMogul reminds users of their other recent integration with Zapier.
With access to Zaps, you can create a combination of triggers and actions that form workflows, improving your efficiency. ChartMogul has been consistently providing its customers with valuable integrations to help users sync their data, no matter what existing web services they are using.