Two of the German co-founders of long-running domain name marketplace Sedo have invested in Apptopia.com, appropriately known as the ‘Sedo for apps’. Tim Schumacher and Ulrich Essmann are joined by Kima Ventures, Eric Kagan, Telegraph Hill Capital and Rothenberg Ventures in the undisclosed bridge funding round.
Sedo was founded in 2001 and is now based in Cologne and in Cambridge, Massachusetts with annual revenues of $200 million (€148m). Schumacher and Essmann, two of its four original founders, now hope to see their new investment further tap into the app sales market.
Boston-based Apptopia is a marketplace for the buying and selling of mobile apps. Founded in 2011, it had raised investment of more than $1 million before the latest round.
Thousands of apps have been sold through the Apptopia platform so far, seeing payments to developers of more than $5 million in total. On its website, the company boasts that it manages the entire process of selling an app – as a complete business rather than just a piece of software – from valuations and connecting with potential buyers to escrow services and code review.
The new money will now go towards expanding into international markets.
In a statement, Schumacher and Essmann said: “Apps have become the prime mobile navigational items, just like domain names on the Web. Apptopia.com and its awesome team are in a market-leading position to capture this market.”
Schumacher, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, is also involved with startups such as Eyeo.com, makers of Adblock Plus, Stuffle.it and Yieldkit.com. He told Silicon Allee: “Apptopia can certainly become for apps what Sedo became for domain names – namely an efficient market place in a fragmented environment.”
Eliran Sapir, founder and CEO of Apptopia, said: “In sharing Apptopia’s solution with advisors, investors, and existing customers, we learned that we had built a platform that reached far beyond the scope we had originally envisioned, and we believe Apptopia has the ability to alleviate some of the core underlying problems and inefficiencies publishers and app stores are currently facing.”