The cloud-focused, retail point-of-sale software firm Vend, which is based in Auckland, has landed approximately $1 million in funding, CEO and founder Vaughan Rowsell has confirmed.
The investment is from German venture capital firm Point Nine Capital and “a couple of individuals”, Rowsell says.
He wouldn’t name a specific figure, but says the amount is “around $1 million”.
Point Nine Capital is the investment arm of German start-up incubator Team Europe.
The investment is the culmination of a relationship Rowsell established with Point Nine Capital managing partner Christoph Janz at the 2010 CloudConnect LaunchPad conference, an event at which software start-ups make presentations to the audience, which consists of cloud computing specialists from around the world. Finalists and a winner are selected at the conference; Vend was a finalist in 2010.
“I met Christoph there and he wanted to come on board as an early-stage investor, but I was already talking to Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson,” Rowsell says.
Morgan and Simpson went on to invest in Vend, Simpson via local investment firm Southgate Labs.
When the company was ready for “the next stage” of investment, he contacted Janz.
Rowsell wouldn’t reveal the size of the Point Nine Capital-led consortium’s stake, but says it amounts to less than 50 percent of Vend and that he personally remains the majority shareholder.
Vend has “thousands of users in more than 80 countries” according to a statement from the company.
Rowsell says the majority of Vend users are small, owner-operated businesses.