Bonanzle Rocks! Investors Drop $1 Million For Advancement Of The Site

Bonanzle has a lot to be proud of and excited about these days. They have locked in $1 million from some of the top investors in the Seattle, Wa. area.

Way to go Bonanzle!!

Here is what Bonanzle's founder and CEO, Bill Harding has to say:

Why get funded? And why now?

We couldn't be happier about finally having the resources to buy a Bonanzle rocket ship. Mark has already dibsed first trip to Mars. For "normal" startups, raising money from investors is usually one of the first matters to get taken care of. If not for the strong support of our community and dear old Google search, we would have needed to do this a year ago. But because of Bonanzle's fast-spreading reputation (and thus sales), we have been able to bide our time and wait until we saw a deal that was simply too good to pass up.

This is that deal. Our group of investors is comprised of many of Seattle's most respected entrepeneurs and investors -- people who understand the significance of what we've built, what our community means to the site, and who agree with the service-first mantra that is going to help us continue to grow rapidly for years to come.

We feel like we owe this to our sellers. So many Bonanzle users have spent countless hours setting up their booths, marketing their items on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, and have done all they can to build a successful business on Bonanzle. For the people who have stuck with us as we've grown, we want to prove our commitment to doing everything in our power to ensure that the time spent booth building is rewarded with a user experience that continues to improve, and continues to deliver an ever-growing number of buyers over time.

What changes?

The biggest change coming will be the increased speed at which we can fix bugs and create a more polished user experience. To this point, Bonanzle has been built with a very small development team. As our number of buyers continues to grow month after month, our obligation to tending the community grows, and the amount of time available to add meaningful improvements shrinks. If there's one thing we will never be OK with, it's stagnation. Though it will take some time to put the right team in place, within the next few months, we expect that our speed of evolution will become even faster than it had been back in the glory days of 2k9.

Another personal pet peeve of mine over the last year has been how little time we've had to focus test our buying and selling experiences. With our new resources, one of my first priorities will be to put in place a sustainable plan to ensure that stuff works the way that real users expect it to, not just the way we think it probably ought to work at the time its added.

What doesn't change?

This is probably the equally important, if not more important, question to many of our existing users.

First of all, Mark and I will continue to perform the same roles we have had. That is, Mark will continue to ensure that we provide the best support experience of any marketplace online, and I'll continue to work toward creating a fast and simple site that is fun to use.

Bonanzle will remain a product-driven company, as opposed to a marketing-driven company. It's true that we are treading toward more advertising through Adwords and otherwise, and we will continue to incrementally spend on a limited amount of advertising. But fundamentally, it is our belief that $1 spent on building a better site will provide more sustained value than $1 buying a single customer, and then sending that customer into a mediocre experience. During this crucial phase of our growth, it is imperative that we focus on what makes the Bonanzle experience unique, and polish it like crazy until it is so wonderful it makes new users weep in joyful triumph. (<-- use of hyperbole, but you get the idea).

Oh, and for all the paranoiacs in the crowd, I would be remiss not to state the obvious: that fees here are obviously not changing (they're locked in, remember?)

What is Bonanzle doing next?

1. Hiring (say, you wouldn't happen to know any good programmers, designers, or product/ui specialists, would you?)

2. Everything else. Where "everything else" includes: working to get our sellers more detailed metrics about their item visitors and sales; making it easier to register and chat on the site if you don't have an account; investigating means by which to make it easier for new visitors to trust Bonanzle and our sellers; building ways to make category-specific shopping experience interesting; and countless other surprises of the pleasant sort.

http://www.bonanzle.com/blogs/167
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Bonanzle has really shown how they are not just a fly by night company and the fact that investors are willing to drop their money on the site says a lot for the potential of the site. It looks like there is a very bright future ahead!

Congratulations to Bonanzle, Bill Harding and the rest of the staff!