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French startup Glose just raised a $3.4 million funding round (€3 million) for its reading app on iPhone, iPad and Android. The company wants to make reading books more social.

If you’re an avid book reader, chances are you always carry a pencil with you to write some notes in the margins. Or maybe you have a tiny notebook with important quotes. But that experience hasn’t worked well with ebooks.

Sure, you can highlight text on your ereader, in the Kindle app and other ebook apps. But it’s hard to do anything with them down the road. Glose wants to leverage your phone to let you do more with the book you’re currently reading.

OneRagTime, Expon Capital, Kima Ventures, Bpifrance participated in today’s funding round as well as business angels, such as Sébastien Breteau, Patrick Bertrand and Julien Codorniou.

Glose has its own bookstore and lets you read your own DRM-free ebooks. The app then keeps you motivated with reading streaks and other gamification aspects. But my favorite feature is that you can highlight texts, write annotations and share them with your friends.

When your friends read the same book six months later, they can open the annotations in the margin to see what you wrote down. You can follow booklists, create private reading groups and see the progress of your friends. 600,000 people have downloaded the app.

Up next, Glose wants to release a separate service called Glose Education. This version will be tailored for universities and high schools. Teachers will be able to create reading groups, assign homework, write down annotations for the class and more. This seems like a natural use case for a social reading app.

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Finalcad, a mobile platform that enables the construction industry to digitize much of its processes, has closed $40 million in Series C funding. The round was led by publicly listed London venture capital firm Draper Esprit, and Cathay Innovation, with the support of Salesforce Ventures. Existing existing French investors Serena, Aster and CapHorn Invest also participated.

Funded in 2012 by Jimmy Louchart, Joffroy Louchart and David Vauthrin, Finalcad has set out to solve the construction industry’s “chronic low productivity” problem. The Paris-based company has developed a SaaS and mobile app to help construction workers and other construction stakeholders collaborate digitally, which is believed to be the key to removing many of the efficiencies in construction.

Specifically — and according to McKinsey — labor-productivity growth in construction has averaged only 1 percent a year over the past two decades, compared with growth of 2.8 percent for the total world economy and 3.6 percent in the case of manufacturing. The construction industry is also lagging behind in terms of digitization: MGI’s digitization index places it among the least digitized sectors.

To help remedy this, Finalcad’s SaaS lets construction site engineers, foremen, architects and consultants work together via the Finalcad mobile app, enabling collaboration across a wide variety of workflows both on site and at the office.

Along with acting as a communication tool — akin to a ‘Yammer for construction’ — the software also enables stakeholders to work on drawings, BIM models, tasks, controls, safety procedures and progress monitoring. From this vantage point, Finalcad is able to provide insights and “best practices at a company level,” powered by its analytics technology.

On who Finalcad’s competition is, unsurprisingly co-founder and CMO David Vauthrin says it’s a “mix of paper and pencil, excel sheets, and IM platforms,” such as WhatsApp or WeChat etc.

“On direct competiton, we face some players, but they are all very small companies, limited to one trade (e.g. buildings) or to a [single] geography,” he says.

Vauthrin also tells me that the Paris-based company’s business model is not based on per project sales, but is designed to encourage company-wide digital transformation. This sees Finalcad operate a subscription model based on a percentage of a company’s turnover.

“We created and implement into our customer’s organisation a ‘change management’ methodology to make sure that the majority of our customer’s workforce is going to embrace this change,” he adds.

To that end, Finalcad says it will use the new Series C funding to extend its SaaS, which spans support for buildings and infrastructure to energy, operations, and maintenance. It will also invest in R&D related to its Construction Insight Platform, and plans to hire an additional 100 people globally, adding to a current headcount of 170 people across 12 countries.

“When we raised our Series B in 2016, we intended to implement pivotal change: moving from a project-based business model to a company-wide digital transformation one. This involved covering all the main activities of our industry: buildings, infrastructure, energy, operations and maintenance,” says Jimmy Louchart, co-founder and CEO, in a statement.

“Since then, we validated this shift with some major contract wins in Europe and Asia. Now this Series C allows us to fully deploy our new strategy on a global scale. We firmly believe that this unique approach is coming to fruition, and the value we bring to our customers is the right path towards changing the way we build”.

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Fintech startup Revolut is now officially a bank. While the startup initially expected to get its European banking license during the first half of 2018, the company has finally come out of the regulatory tunnel with a license in hand.

As expected, Revolut applied for a license through the Bank of Lithuania and is leveraging passporting rules to operate in other European countries. Users will see some changes over the coming months.

First, the company expects to roll out new features in the U.K., France, Germany and Poland. Right now, Revolut is more like an e-wallet that you can top up in many different ways. Users in those countries will get a true current account and a non-prepaid debit card in a few months.

After transferring your money to Revolut’s own infrastructure, funds will be covered up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme. It should convince more users to switch to Revolut for their salaries and big sums of money.

Eventually, the startup expects to be able to offer overdrafts and loans. All fintech startups end up offering credit at some point as it’s a good way to generate revenue.

There are currently 8,000 to 10,000 people opening a Revolut account per day. Users generate $4 billion in monthly transaction volume.

It’s going to be interesting to see if current accounts will affect growth. It’s currently quite easy to open a Revolut account as users don’t need to go through a lot of KYC processes. This is going to change once the startup starts opening current accounts.

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Fintech startup Revolut is now officially a bank. While the startup initially expected to get its European banking license during the first half of 2018, the company has finally come out of the regulatory tunnel with a license in hand.

As expected, Revolut applied for a license through the Bank of Lithuania and is leveraging passporting rules to operate in other European countries. Users will see some changes over the coming months.

First, the company expects to roll out new features in the U.K., France, Germany and Poland. Right now, Revolut is more like an e-wallet that you can top up in many different ways. Users in those countries will get a true current account and a non-prepaid debit card in a few months.

After transferring your money to Revolut’s own infrastructure, funds will be covered up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme. It should convince more users to switch to Revolut for their salaries and big sums of money.

Eventually, the startup expects to be able to offer overdrafts and loans. All fintech startups end up offering credit at some point as it’s a good way to generate revenue.

There are currently 8,000 to 10,000 people opening a Revolut account per day. Users generate $4 billion in monthly transaction volume.

It’s going to be interesting to see if current accounts will affect growth. It’s currently quite easy to open a Revolut account as users don’t need to go through a lot of KYC processes. This is going to change once the startup starts opening current accounts.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Erx9RW

//

Fintech startup Revolut is now officially a bank. While the startup initially expected to get its European banking license during the first half of 2018, the company has finally come out of the regulatory tunnel with a license in hand.

As expected, Revolut applied for a license through the Bank of Lithuania and is leveraging passporting rules to operate in other European countries. Users will see some changes over the coming months.

First, the company expects to roll out new features in the U.K., France, Germany and Poland. Right now, Revolut is more like an e-wallet that you can top up in many different ways. Users in those countries will get a true current account and a non-prepaid debit card in a few months.

After transferring your money to Revolut’s own infrastructure, funds will be covered up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme. It should convince more users to switch to Revolut for their salaries and big sums of money.

Eventually, the startup expects to be able to offer overdrafts and loans. All fintech startups end up offering credit at some point as it’s a good way to generate revenue.

There are currently 8,000 to 10,000 people opening a Revolut account per day. Users generate $4 billion in monthly transaction volume.

It’s going to be interesting to see if current accounts will affect growth. It’s currently quite easy to open a Revolut account as users don’t need to go through a lot of KYC processes. This is going to change once the startup starts opening current accounts.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Erx9RW

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When in July of last year, Softbank’s Vision Fund led a whopping $200 million round in the Silicon Valley startup Plenty, investors behind a competing indoor farming startup across the country, New York-based Bowery, were left reeling.  Just one month earlier, they’d closed on a round that brought Bowery’s total funding to $31 million. And as one of Bowery’s backers told us in the immediate aftermath of Plenty’s enormous round, SoftBank’s involvement “definitely gives you pause.”

It has not, however, prompted investors to give up, plainly. On the contrary, Bowery just today announced that it has raised $90 million in fresh funding led by GV, with participation from Temasek and Almanac Ventures; the company’s Series A investors, General Catalyst and GGV Capital; and numerous of its seed investors, including First Round Capital.

It’s easy to understand investors’ unwavering interest in the company and the space, given the opportunity that Bowery, and Plenty, and hundreds of other indoor farming startups, are chasing. As Bowery outlined in a post this morning, “traditional agriculture uses 700 million pounds of pesticides annually, and fresh food takes weeks” and sometimes longer to land on the dinner table. Along the way, terrible things sometimes happen, including E.coli outbreaks, like the kind recently linked to the sale of romaine lettuce in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Bowery, which is growing crops inside two warehouses in New Jersey can promise people in New York that their bok choy didn’t travel far at all.

Bowery also appears to be gaining the kind of momentum that VCs want to see. According to the company, it started life with five employees three years ago; today its staff has ballooned to 65 people. It has established a distribution partnership with Whole Foods. It has as partnered with sweetgreen, the fast-food chain known for its farm-to-table salad bowls, and Dig Inn, a New York- and Boston-based chain of locally farm-sourced restaurants.

Unsurprisingly, the company says it plans to partner with new retail, food service, and restaurant partners in the new year, too.

Bigger picture, Bowery says it plans to build a “global distributed network of farms” that are connected to each other through a kind of operating system, and that it has already begun work on the first of these outside of the tristate area.

Whether it succeeds in that vision is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s hard to know how big an impact that Bowery, or Plenty (which plans to build 300 indoor farms in or near Chinese cities) or any of its many competitors will ultimately have. But given that we’ll need to feed two billion more people by 2050 without overwhelming the planet, it’s also easy to understand from a humanitarian standpoint why investors might be keen to write these companies big checks. In fact, the rest of us should probably be rooting them on, too.

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The lines between streetwear and luxury fashion have blurred in recent years, especially as excitement around sneaker brands like Yeezy and Off-White has soared.

A marriage between a luxury fashion marketplace and a sneaker and streetwear reseller seems like a natural way to wrap up M&A in 2018. With that said, Farfetch has acquired New York-based Stadium Goods, opting to pay $250 million for the sneaker startup in a combination of cash and Farfetch stock. Headquartered in London, Farfetch went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September, pricing its shares at $20 apiece and raising $885 million in the process.

What’s more impressive is Stadium Goods’ journey to exit. The company, which sells new and deadstock products online and in a brick-and-mortar store in New York’s Soho neighborhood, was founded in 2015 by John McPheters and Jed Stiller and had only raised $4.6 million in venture capital funding from Forerunner Ventures, The Chernin Group and Mark Cuban, who is an advisor to the startup.

“There was a time not that long ago when you couldn’t wear sneakers and streetwear to nightclubs and restaurants,” McPheters, Stadium Goods’ chief executive officer, told TechCrunch. “But adoption of the stuff we are selling has continued to grow at a very large clip.”

The sale to Farfetch not only provides a major boost to the sneaker tech ecosystem, which is surprisingly much larger than those who aren’t familiar with it might have guessed, but its yet another successful e-commerce exit for Kirsten Green, the founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, who’s also backed Dollar Shave Club and Bonobos — direct-to-consumer retailers that sold for $1 billion and $310 million, respectively.

Stadium Goods founders John McPheters (left) and Jed Stiller.

Farfetch boarded the sneaker and streetwear hype train a while ago when it incorporated brands like Nike’s Jordan, pairs of which sell for more than $1,000 on the site. The company doubled down on sneakers earlier this year when it began integrating Stadium Goods products. After noticing high-demand, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves tells TechCrunch, they began acquisition talks with the startup. Stadium Goods will remain independent as part of the deal, with McPheters and Stiller staying on to lead the brand forward. The company’s portfolio of shoes and apparel will be fully available on Farfetch’s e-commerce platform in the coming months.

“Luxury streetwear is a significant part of our business,” Neves said. “For many years now, we have had the largest collection of Off-White, for example, on the internet … What we did not have was the resale, secondary market. It was clear this was an interesting opportunity.”

Together, Farfetch and Stadium Goods will focus on international growth. McPheters tells TechCrunch Stadium Goods already had a significant international base of customers, but a partnership with Farfetch gives them the tools to go places they’ve never been before.

“In my mind, we are only just beginning,” McPheters said. “As more and more customers get comfortable with purchasing aftermarket items, we are going to continue to grow.”

The global athletic footwear industry is expected to be worth $95 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, sneaker resale is a $1 billion market and growing, fueled by a cohort of startups making it easier than ever for sneakerheads to locate rare shoes online and have them delivered to their doorsteps. That includes Stadium Goods, Flight Club, GOAT and StockX.

All four of these resellers, which ensure authentication of their products, are backed by VCs. Flight Club merged with GOAT earlier this year and together the pair raised a $60 million Series C. Before that, GOAT had brought in $30 million for its secondary market for collectible shoes from Accel, Upfront Ventures, Matrix Partners and more. StockX, for its part, has raised just over $50 million from Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, Wale, Eminem, SV Angel and others.

According to Crunchbase data, VCs have funneled more than $200 million into sneaker startups in the past two years. Now, given the size of Stadium Goods’ exit, investment in the space will likely pick up significantly as other VCs hope to land an exit multiple that substantial.

Whether the reselling market will continue to expand is in question. Some have called it a bubble poised to burst, claiming it’s at its “height in popularity.” Why? Because corporate shoe brands like Nike and Adidas are keenly aware of the secondary market for their products and how they, too, can profit from it. If they decide to increase the supply of particular shoe models hot on the secondary market, they can radically disrupt the reseller economy. McPheters, however, says this doesn’t concern him.

“Brands need to strangle the demand to keep driving excitement in the space,” McPheters said. “They count on that hype to really move the needle.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2C9FM1j

//

The lines between streetwear and luxury fashion have blurred in recent years, especially as excitement around sneaker brands like Yeezy and Off-White has soared.

A marriage between a luxury fashion marketplace and a sneaker and streetwear reseller seems like a natural way to wrap up M&A in 2018. With that said, Farfetch has acquired New York-based Stadium Goods, opting to pay $250 million for the sneaker startup in a combination of cash and Farfetch stock. Headquartered in London, Farfetch went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September, pricing its shares at $20 apiece and raising $885 million in the process.

What’s more impressive is Stadium Goods’ journey to exit. The company, which sells new and deadstock products online and in a brick-and-mortar store in New York’s Soho neighborhood, was founded in 2015 by John McPheters and Jed Stiller and had only raised $4.6 million in venture capital funding from Forerunner Ventures, The Chernin Group and Mark Cuban, who is an advisor to the startup.

“There was a time not that long ago when you couldn’t wear sneakers and streetwear to nightclubs and restaurants,” McPheters, Stadium Goods’ chief executive officer, told TechCrunch. “But adoption of the stuff we are selling has continued to grow at a very large clip.”

The sale to Farfetch not only provides a major boost to the sneaker tech ecosystem, which is surprisingly much larger than those who aren’t familiar with it might have guessed, but its yet another successful e-commerce exit for Kirsten Green, the founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, who’s also backed Dollar Shave Club and Bonobos — direct-to-consumer retailers that sold for $1 billion and $310 million, respectively.

Stadium Goods founders John McPheters (left) and Jed Stiller.

Farfetch boarded the sneaker and streetwear hype train a while ago when it incorporated brands like Nike’s Jordan, pairs of which sell for more than $1,000 on the site. The company doubled down on sneakers earlier this year when it began integrating Stadium Goods products. After noticing high-demand, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves tells TechCrunch, they began acquisition talks with the startup. Stadium Goods will remain independent as part of the deal, with McPheters and Stiller staying on to lead the brand forward. The company’s portfolio of shoes and apparel will be fully available on Farfetch’s e-commerce platform in the coming months.

“Luxury streetwear is a significant part of our business,” Neves said. “For many years now, we have had the largest collection of Off-White, for example, on the internet … What we did not have was the resale, secondary market. It was clear this was an interesting opportunity.”

Together, Farfetch and Stadium Goods will focus on international growth. McPheters tells TechCrunch Stadium Goods already had a significant international base of customers, but a partnership with Farfetch gives them the tools to go places they’ve never been before.

“In my mind, we are only just beginning,” McPheters said. “As more and more customers get comfortable with purchasing aftermarket items, we are going to continue to grow.”

The global athletic footwear industry is expected to be worth $95 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, sneaker resale is a $1 billion market and growing, fueled by a cohort of startups making it easier than ever for sneakerheads to locate rare shoes online and have them delivered to their doorsteps. That includes Stadium Goods, Flight Club, GOAT and StockX.

All four of these resellers, which ensure authentication of their products, are backed by VCs. Flight Club merged with GOAT earlier this year and together the pair raised a $60 million Series C. Before that, GOAT had brought in $30 million for its secondary market for collectible shoes from Accel, Upfront Ventures, Matrix Partners and more. StockX, for its part, has raised just over $50 million from Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, Wale, Eminem, SV Angel and others.

According to Crunchbase data, VCs have funneled more than $200 million into sneaker startups in the past two years. Now, given the size of Stadium Goods’ exit, investment in the space will likely pick up significantly as other VCs hope to land an exit multiple that substantial.

Whether the reselling market will continue to expand is in question. Some have called it a bubble poised to burst, claiming it’s at its “height in popularity.” Why? Because corporate shoe brands like Nike and Adidas are keenly aware of the secondary market for their products and how they, too, can profit from it. If they decide to increase the supply of particular shoe models hot on the secondary market, they can radically disrupt the reseller economy. McPheters, however, says this doesn’t concern him.

“Brands need to strangle the demand to keep driving excitement in the space,” McPheters said. “They count on that hype to really move the needle.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2C9FM1j

//

The lines between streetwear and luxury fashion have blurred in recent years, especially as excitement around sneaker brands like Yeezy and Off-White has soared.

A marriage between a luxury fashion marketplace and a sneaker and streetwear reseller seems like a natural way to wrap up M&A in 2018. With that said, Farfetch has acquired New York-based Stadium Goods, opting to pay $250 million for the sneaker startup in a combination of cash and Farfetch stock. Headquartered in London, Farfetch went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September, pricing its shares at $20 apiece and raising $885 million in the process.

What’s more impressive is Stadium Goods’ journey to exit. The company, which sells new and deadstock products online and in a brick-and-mortar store in New York’s Soho neighborhood, was founded in 2015 by John McPheters and Jed Stiller and had only raised $4.6 million in venture capital funding from Forerunner Ventures, The Chernin Group and Mark Cuban, who is an advisor to the startup.

“There was a time not that long ago when you couldn’t wear sneakers and streetwear to nightclubs and restaurants,” McPheters, Stadium Goods’ chief executive officer, told TechCrunch. “But adoption of the stuff we are selling has continued to grow at a very large clip.”

The sale to Farfetch not only provides a major boost to the sneaker tech ecosystem, which is surprisingly much larger than those who aren’t familiar with it might have guessed, but its yet another successful e-commerce exit for Kirsten Green, the founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, who’s also backed Dollar Shave Club and Bonobos — direct-to-consumer retailers that sold for $1 billion and $310 million, respectively.

Stadium Goods founders John McPheters (left) and Jed Stiller.

Farfetch boarded the sneaker and streetwear hype train a while ago when it incorporated brands like Nike’s Jordan, some of which sell for more than $1,000 on the site. The company doubled down on sneakers earlier this year when it began integrating Stadium Goods products. After noticing high-demand, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves tells TechCrunch, they began acquisition talks with the startup. Stadium Goods will remain independent as part of the deal, with McPheters and Stiller staying on to lead the brand forward. The company’s portfolio of shoes and apparel will be fully available on Farfetch’s e-commerce platform in the coming months.

“Luxury streetwear is a significant part of our business,” Neves said. “For many years now, we have had the largest collection of Off-White, for example, on the internet … What we did not have was the resale, secondary market. It was clear this was an interesting opportunity.”

Together, Farfetch and Stadium Goods will focus on international growth. McPheters tells TechCrunch Stadium Goods already had a significant international base of customers, but a partnership with Farfetch gives them the tools to go places they’ve never been before.

“In my mind, we are only just beginning,” McPheters said. “As more and more customers get comfortable with purchasing aftermarket items, we are going to continue to grow.”

The global athletic footwear industry is expected to be worth $95 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, sneaker resale is a $1 billion market and growing, fueled by a cohort of startups making it easier than ever for sneakerheads to locate rare shoes online and have them delivered to their doorsteps. That includes Stadium Goods, Flight Club, GOAT and StockX.

All four of these resellers, which ensure authentication of their products, are backed by VCs. Flight Club merged with GOAT earlier this year and together the pair raised a $60 million Series C. Before that, GOAT had brought in $30 million for its secondary market for collectible shoes from Accel, Upfront Ventures, Matrix Partners and more. StockX, for its part, has raised just over $50 million from Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, Wale, Eminem, SV Angel and others.

According to Crunchbase data, VCs have funneled more than $200 million into sneaker startups in the past two years. Now, given the size of Stadium Goods’ exit, investment in the space will likely pick up significantly as other VCs hope to land an exit multiple that substantial.

Whether the reselling market will continue to expand is in question. Some have called it a bubble poised to burst, claiming it’s at its “height in popularity.” Why? Because corporate shoe brands like Nike and Adidas are keenly aware of the secondary market for their products and how they, too, can profit from it. If they decide to increase the supply of particular shoe models hot on the secondary market, they can radically disrupt the reseller economy. McPheters, however, says this doesn’t concern him.

“Brands need to strangle the demand to keep driving excitement in the space,” McPheters said. “They count on that hype to really move the needle.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2C9FM1j

//

The lines between streetwear and luxury fashion have blurred in recent years, especially as excitement around sneaker brands like Yeezy and Off-White has soared.

A marriage between a luxury fashion marketplace and a sneaker and streetwear reseller seems like a natural way to wrap up M&A in 2018. With that said, Farfetch has acquired New York-based Stadium Goods, opting to pay $250 million for the sneaker startup in a combination of cash and Farfetch stock. Headquartered in London, Farfetch went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September, pricing its shares at $20 apiece and raising $885 million in the process.

What’s more impressive is Stadium Goods’ journey to exit. The company, which sells new and deadstock products online and in a brick-and-mortar store in New York’s Soho neighborhood, was founded in 2015 by John McPheters and Jed Stiller and had only raised $4.6 million in venture capital funding from Forerunner Ventures, The Chernin Group and Mark Cuban, who is an advisor to the startup.

“There was a time not that long ago when you couldn’t wear sneakers and streetwear to nightclubs and restaurants,” McPheters, Stadium Goods’ chief executive officer, told TechCrunch. “But adoption of the stuff we are selling has continued to grow at a very large clip.”

The sale to Farfetch not only provides a major boost to the sneaker tech ecosystem, which is surprisingly much larger than those who aren’t familiar with it might have guessed, but its yet another successful e-commerce exit for Kirsten Green, the founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, who’s also backed Dollar Shave Club and Bonobos — direct-to-consumer retailers that sold for $1 billion and $310 million, respectively.

Stadium Goods founders John McPheters (left) and Jed Stiller.

Farfetch boarded the sneaker and streetwear hype train a while ago when it incorporated brands like Nike’s Jordan, some of which sell for more than $1,000 on the site. The company doubled down on sneakers earlier this year when it began integrating Stadium Goods products. After noticing high-demand, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves tells TechCrunch, they began acquisition talks with the startup. Stadium Goods will remain independent as part of the deal, with McPheters and Stiller staying on to lead the brand forward. The company’s portfolio of shoes and apparel will be fully available on Farfetch’s e-commerce platform in the coming months.

“Luxury streetwear is a significant part of our business,” Neves said. “For many years now, we have had the largest collection of Off-White, for example, on the internet … What we did not have was the resale, secondary market. It was clear this was an interesting opportunity.”

Together, Farfetch and Stadium Goods will focus on international growth. McPheters tells TechCrunch Stadium Goods already had a significant international base of customers, but a partnership with Farfetch gives them the tools to go places they’ve never been before.

“In my mind, we are only just beginning,” McPheters said. “As more and more customers get comfortable with purchasing aftermarket items, we are going to continue to grow.”

The global athletic footwear industry is expected to be worth $95 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, sneaker resale is a $1 billion market and growing, fueled by a cohort of startups making it easier than ever for sneakerheads to locate rare shoes online and have them delivered to their doorsteps. That includes Stadium Goods, Flight Club, GOAT and StockX.

All four of these resellers, which ensure authentication of their products, are backed by VCs. Flight Club merged with GOAT earlier this year and together the pair raised a $60 million Series C. Before that, GOAT had brought in $30 million for its secondary market for collectible shoes from Accel, Upfront Ventures, Matrix Partners and more. StockX, for its part, has raised just over $50 million from Mark Wahlberg, Scooter Braun, Wale, Eminem, SV Angel and others.

According to Crunchbase data, VCs have funneled more than $200 million into sneaker startups in the past two years. Now, given the size of Stadium Goods’ exit, investment in the space will likely pick up significantly as other VCs hope to land an exit multiple that substantial.

Whether the reselling market will continue to expand is in question. Some have called it a bubble poised to burst, claiming it’s at its “height in popularity.” Why? Because corporate shoe brands like Nike and Adidas are keenly aware of the secondary market for their products and how they, too, can profit from it. If they decide to increase the supply of particular shoe models hot on the secondary market, they can radically disrupt the reseller economy. McPheters, however, says this doesn’t concern him.

“Brands need to strangle the demand to keep driving excitement in the space,” McPheters said. “They count on that hype to really move the needle.”

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