Increased Investment in TrustPilot

RNS Number : 4104U

Draper Esprit PLC

18 January 2017

 

18 January 2017

Draper Esprit plc

("Draper Esprit" or "the Group")

INCREASED Investment in TRUSTPILOT

Draper Esprit (AIM: GROW, ESM: GRW), a leading venture capital firm involved in the creation, funding and development of high-growth digital technology businesses, today announces that it has doubled its equity stake in TrustPilot ("the Company"), investing a further $6.9 million (£5.5 million).

Draper Esprit first invested in Trustpilot in 2013, with a follow on investment in 2015 and including this current investment, has now invested £11 million.

Founded in 2007, Trustpilot is a global, multi-language review community.  Trustpilot has customers in 65 countries including Denmark, Sweden, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S. Trustpilot has offices in New York, London, Denver, Copenhagen and Melbourne.

Consumers visit the Trustpilot website to leave positive or negative reviews about an online merchant where they purchased a product or service. Once a merchant has a paid subscription to use Trustpilot, they are able to respond directly and openly with consumers who have left reviews. Merchants may embed the Trustpilot widget onto their site in order to highlight their ratings amongst customers, and can opt into having starred reviews showing up on ad-words when a customer searches for that merchant.  Reviews help drive increased customer traffic and improve conversion significantly.

Simon Cook, CEO Draper Esprit commented:

"Trustpilot has built a strong SaaS revenue model with excellent growth in Europe and the USA over the last three years.  Their aim is to build the world's single most trusted review brand and we are committed to helping them achieve this."

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Enquiries

Draper Esprit plc Simon Cook (Chief Executive Officer) Ben Wilkinson (Chief Financial Officer)	[phone]
Numis Securities Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker Alex Ham Garri Jones Richard Thomas Paul Gillam Jamie Loughborough	[phone]
Goodbody Stockbrokers ESM Adviser & Joint Broker Don Harrington Linda Hickey Dearbhla Gallagher	[phone]
Belvedere Communications (PR) John West Kim van Beeck	[phone]

Notes to Editors

Draper Esprit (www.draperesprit.com) was founded in 2006, and is one of the largest and most active VC firms in Europe, helping entrepreneurs to build global ground-breaking technology companies through hands-on board level support, internationalisation and commercialisation activities and investment.

In 2016, with the support of new institutional investors and existing shareholders, Draper Esprit transformed into a listed PLC model (LSE: GROW.L, ESM GRW.I) to take a longer term, multi-stage, patient capital approach. In recent years, Draper Esprit's exits have generated more than $4.0 billion in combined enterprise value.

Draper Esprit is the exclusive Western European member of the Silicon Valley-based Draper Global Network, with offices around the world and portfolio companies including Baidu, Skype, Space X, Tesla and other world leading companies.

 

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