Qype, the Europe-wide local reviews site, has raised a further €8 million in funding from Wellington Partners, Advent Venture Partners and Partech International. The money raised will be used to help Qype’s geographical expansion into five new countries and increased functionality.
This new investment takes Qype’s funding to date to €13m, which makes it one of Europes best funded startups right now. Previous seed and Angel rounds were from BrainsToVentures in 2005, seed from Partech International in 2006 and Advent Venture Partners in 2006.
This will make interesting reading for European competitors Tipped and TrustedPlaces which don’t have nearly the same war chest. It will also be of interest to Yelp, the US site built along the same lines which has $31m in funding, and is probably thinking about overseas expansion right about now.
Qype, founded in Hamburg in 2005 by Stephan Uhrenbacher, launched in the UK in September 2007 and runs in Germany, Switzerland, Austria among others. It currently claims 5.1 million unique users per month, 250,000+ public reviews, and covers over 6,000 European towns and cities.
Qype also announced the appointment of two new non-executive board members: media veteran Pelle Tornberg, and Wellington General Partner Eric Archambeau, as befits the new investment.
This definitely makes interesting reading
Well done to the Qype guys (and girls).
That’s a decent chunk of change given the economy. Are they gonna take on Yelp?
Wow!
Congrats to them. Good to hear there’s still some decent funding going on – despite the economic situation.
Nice! I use Qype all the time, has made my move to London much, much easier.
The market needs some consolidation to provide the scale to make the reviews useful. Maybe the funding is for acquisition?
Interesting reading indeed, serious money, well done folks.
Congrats Stefan, Andrew, Phil & co. Qype UK seems to be flying. Good to see the Gumtree alumni doing well!
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I wonder if they think now, the same way when they bought it.