LONDON & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lystable, the UK start-up transforming how companies connect with freelancers, businesses and services, announced today that it has secured $1.5 million in funding led by Valar Ventures, the US-based venture fund backed by Peter Thiel. This investment makes Lystable only Valar’s second ever investment in London, following their investments in TransferWise.
Lystable, founded by ex-Google designer Peter Johnston, officially launched in February 2015, after graduating from the Techstars London accelerators program. In its first week alone, the start-up turned heads after securing $500K investment from Mark Evans of Balderton Capital, Richard Fearn and Courtney Grant, recognizing the business as an important newcomer to the market while in its infancy.
This latest move follows Valar Venture’s recent involvement in sizeable funding rounds in Germany, with creative photo community app EyeEm, and banking app Number26, and signifies a promising future for the young business.
Different from most enterprise apps, Lystable is led by award winning ex-Google designer Peter Johnston, so it places a premium on user experience and design. The meteoric rise of popular team chat app, Slack, with its consumer centric design, has highlighted the need for enterprise software across the board to follow suit.
“The way we all do business has fundamentally changed,” said Peter Johnston, founder and CEO of Lystable. “While at Google, I experienced on a global level the pain of handling hundreds of relationships and interactions with freelancers, agencies and services. The navigation of this workflow for both enterprises and external parties is currently a mess. Our solution aims to solve this by centralizing the data companies need in order to find, manage and evaluate the right partners.”
The funding will enable this fast moving company to quickly activate its ambitious growth plans and add even more depth to the already heavy hitting product team, currently comprised of ex-Google, Salesforce, Huddle and Onefinestay designers and engineers.
James Fitzgerald, a founding partner of Valar Ventures said: “We are delighted to be supporting Peter and his team. Their approach to solving this problem by capitalizing on pre-existing intelligence inside enterprises makes them a much more efficient and scalable option than the traditional marketplaces that currently exist. We are super excited by what they are building.”
Other participants in this round included Backed, Playfair Capital, Mark Evans, Richard Fearn, Guy Podjarny, Courtney Grant and Leila Rastegar Zegna.
Company Info
About Lystable
Lystable was founded in November 2014 by Peter Johnston. Lystable has eight employees based in Clerkenwell in London. Lystable is a platform that helps enterprises search, manage and evaluate external parties including freelancers, businesses and service. It allows companies to easily connect with the right partners in their network. For more information, visit www.lystable.com.
Investment
Lystable has received $2M in seed funding from Valar Ventures, Backed Capital, Playfair Capital, FundFire, Mark Evans, Richard Fearn, Courtney Grant, Leila Rastergar Zegna, Bobby Nolla, Nancy Fechnay, Mick Hagen and Dan Stuart.
