附近上门

After coming onto the digital marketplace scene last November as a new player, is back with a $70 million Series B round of funding.

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and co-founded San Francisco-based Heyday last August to accelerate consumer products brands. The company partners with entrepreneurs to acquire, launch and incubate brands, and is developing a marketplace-native technology, data and operations stack.

is doubling down on the company, leading the new financing after being involved in its round. The firm is joined by existing investors including and , as well as Heyday鈥檚 entrepreneur partners. The new investment brings the company鈥檚 total fundraising to more than $250 million, according to 附近上门 data.

The new funding round was driven by speed, Rymarz told 附近上门 News. Since emerging from stealth last November, Heyday has grown to more than 100 employees and crossed $100 million in revenue, he said.

鈥淎cquiring and incubating brands takes capital,鈥� he added. 鈥淲e got through our initial funding and wanted to turbocharge our growth.鈥�

Although Rymarz didn鈥檛 disclose how many brands the company has acquired so far, he did say the funding would be invested into bringing more brands on its marketplace, through either partnership, acquisition or incubation.

Growth

The marketplace aggregator industry is heating up as more players come in and are attracting capital. Last week, e-commerce platform raised $160 million in Series A funding to acquire and scale third-party sellers to be the next generation of retail brands.

Just prior to Acquco鈥檚 announcement, Germany-based announced funding, while, also from Germany, announced $240 million in debt financing. All join a long string of aggregators attracting capital.

While that may seem like a crowded space, there is plenty of opportunity to build brands, according to Rymarz. He said that Amazon鈥檚 marketplace is $300 billion and growing with more than 2 million merchants.

However, Rymarz sees Heyday operating differently than its peers. He considers the company as part of a broader ecosystem that is not just acquiring businesses, but also helping founders turn their vision into a company.

Indeed, Rymarz is looking long term at what Heyday will look like, even 25 years from now. Although there is a massive market at play, he expects it to be a competitive one, but having its platform in place will give Heyday an edge.

鈥淭here are giant companies, like and , but the digital realm doesn鈥檛 have companies like that right now, and that is the opportunity,鈥� he added. 鈥淗eyday is a brand that speaks to the entrepreneur, not a consumer brand. We don鈥檛 want to make it about account aggregation, but about brand acceleration. We want to be more than a marketplace.鈥�

Board member breakdown

In addition to the investment, co-founder joined Heyday鈥檚 board of directors. Sharkey and co-founded the direct-to-consumer household items company in 2016 and have gone on to raise , according to 附近上门 data.

Heyday鈥檚 鈥渃hapter one鈥� was combining and curating a portfolio of brands in a short period of time, according to Sharkey, who called it a 鈥渕ajor feat of speed and Olympic-level athleticism.鈥�

The company鈥檚 next chapter will be about acceleration and about being in the right place at the right time.

鈥淲ith real estate, it is about location, location, location, and it also is with brands that were born to be digital,鈥� Sharkey said in an interview. 鈥淭his is where people are shopping. On the surface, Heyday is building remarkable brands that consumers love, but below the water is all of the back-end technology, stack, data, operations and logistics. All of these brands will be omnichannel, and consumers will be able to discover them all because of the relationships brands will make with customers in ways they weren鈥檛 in before.鈥�

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