Online marketplace VarageSale partners with Sequoia and Lightspeed and raises $34 million

TORONTO, April 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ - VarageSale, the online marketplace for people to buy, sell and connect with their local communities, today announced it has partnered with Lightspeed and Sequoia and raised $34 million. The financing will be used to further enhance the VarageSale user experience and to continue to expand the company's user base around the world. Jeremy Liew, venture capitalist at Lightspeed and Bryan Schreier, partner at Sequoia, have also joined VarageSale's board of directors.

"We have an extremely passionate member base made up of millions of people who use VarageSale every day," said Carl Mercier, co-founder and CEO of VarageSale. "Hearing firsthand about the positive impact we've made on their lives is incredibly rewarding for our team. From donating clothing and household goods to families in need to reuniting lost pets with owners, VarageSale members are just brimming with community spirit. Now, with our new partners on board, we're well-positioned to introduce the unique VarageSale experience to more communities across North America."

"With millions of members and billions of items viewed per month, VarageSale is disrupting the mobile classified space" said Liew, "but it is what happens outside the app and inside the communities that is really unique about their business."

The fun way to buy, sell and connect locally, VarageSale offers members a safe online community where they can do what they love: find great deals and sell their items for extra cash. Local users act as administrators to moderate each community and help foster a safe, enjoyable environment for local commerce. These communities are backstopped by VarageSale's powerful and very user-friendly mobile app.

"VarageSale has created a compelling new category by marrying community and commerce through trust," said Schreier. "They're succeeding where others have failed by recreating on mobile the community feeling of buying and selling with neighbors. The incredible passion and engagement of VarageSale customers is producing a cultural movement unlike any other."

"We started VarageSale because like millions of other people, we had grown extremely frustrated at the lack of easy, fun and safe platforms dedicated to buying and selling locally," said Tami Zuckerman, co-founder and 'Chief Mom' at VarageSale. "Now, with this funding from our new partners, we will be able to continue to invest in the happiness of our user communities."

About VarageSale
VarageSale is an online marketplace that brings people together to buy, sell and connect with their local community.  Founded in 2012, VarageSale has millions of members in communities across USA, Canada and around the world. VarageSale is free to use at www.varagesale.com and on the mobile app, which is available on for iOS, Android and Kindle devices.

About Lightspeed
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a premier venture capital firm with over $3 billion of committed capital under management and investment professionals in Silicon Valley, India, Israel and China with Lightspeed China Partners. Over the past two decades, Lightspeed partners have backed more than 200 consumer and enterprise technology companies, many of which have become leaders in their respective markets, including GrubHub, Nest, Snapchat, The Honest Company, Nimble Storage, Nicira, AppDynamics, DataStax, Nutanix, FusionIO, Riverbed Technology, Brocade, Ciena, DoubleClick, and XtremIO. www.lsvp.com

About Sequoia
The Sequoia team helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. We spur them to push the boundaries of what's possible. In partnering with Sequoia, companies benefit from our unmatched community and the lessons we've learned over 40 years working with Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, John Morgridge, Jerry Yang, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Brian Chesky, Drew Houston, Adi Tatarko and Jack Dorsey, among many others. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 20% of NASDAQ's total value. We're proud that their success also fuels great causes: since 2000 alone we have returned more than $10 billion to non-profits like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT.

SOURCE VarageSale