Frank­furt a. Main — High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), toge­ther with co-inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal, the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, and TEV, has successfully sold its stake in Munich-based soft­ware company metoda. metoda is a leading provi­der of soft­ware-as-a-service solu­ti­ons for real-time market analy­sis in online retail. The new owner is Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners. The three early-stage inves­tors had first inves­ted in metoda toge­ther with seve­ral busi­ness angels as part of the seed round in 2013, and in 2015 they reaf­firmed their commit­ments as part of a Series A finan­cing round.

metoda GmbH is one of the world’s leading provi­ders of real-time market analy­ses in the field of e‑commerce. The world of online commerce is highly dyna­mic, so market parti­ci­pants need to rely on auto­ma­ted tools to gain an over­view of the market situa­tion and their compe­ti­tors. The Soft­ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) solu­ti­ons from metoda offer a solu­tion for this, with which the product data (prices, avai­la­bi­lity, ship­ping costs or deli­very times) of online retail­ers world­wide, inclu­ding Amazon, are conti­nuously recor­ded and analy­zed in a data protec­tion-compli­ant manner. The former start-up’s service enables retail­ers to adjust their own prices and assort­ment in real time to deve­lo­p­ments in the market. With “Amazon Adver­ti­sing AI”, metoda also offers an easy-to-use solu­tion for the auto­ma­tic crea­tion and analy­sis of adver­ti­sing on Amazon.

With a team of 50 employees, metoda today serves more than 200 blue-chip and mid-sized compa­nies, coor­di­na­tes around 50,000 adver­ti­sing campaigns per month, and proces­ses more than one billion e‑commerce data points from 28 count­ries every day.The new majo­rity share­hol­der is Maxburg Betei­li­gun­gen III (“Maxburg”), a fund advi­sed by Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners, an invest­ment company focu­sed on the German-spea­king region with capi­tal commit­ments of € 600 million from the RAG Foun­da­tion. Maxburg focu­ses on long-term corpo­rate invest­ments with the goal of perma­nent and sustainable value enhance­ment and alre­ady holds stakes in seve­ral soft­ware and tech­no­logy companies.

“High-Tech Grün­der­fonds has actively supported the path from start-up to rele­vant indus­try player from the very begin­ning and reco­gni­zed the poten­tial of the idea behind metoda early on. It is impres­sive what the metoda team around Stefan Bures and Robert Schmidtke has crea­ted. We are convin­ced that Maxburg is the right part­ner to successfully accom­pany the company in its further growth.” Romy Schnelle (photo), part­ner at High-Tech Grün­der­fonds.

For Stefan Bures, foun­der and CEO of metoda GmbH, the tran­sac­tion is another important mile­stone in the deve­lo­p­ment of the company: “We are convin­ced that in Maxburg we have found an entre­pre­neu­rial, long-term orien­ted part­ner who will accom­pany us on our future path. At the same time, we would like to thank our previous inves­tors, without whom our success story would not have been possible.”

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 385 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 310 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 275 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 7,500 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable companies.

About TEV
TEV (Tengel­mann Ventures) has been inves­t­ing in start-ups in the consu­mer inter­net, digi­tal services and emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies sectors since 2009. With around 50 invest­ments, Tengel­mann Ventures is one of the most important venture capi­tal inves­tors in Germany. Its best-known invest­ments include compa­nies such as Zalando (IPO), Deli­very Hero (IPO), Klarna, Scalable Capi­tal and data Artisans.
www.tev.de

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups from the fields of digi­tal busi­ness models, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.