Jan 05, 2017
Edison Partners Leads Series B Investment in Zagster
Fuels Growth and Product Development for Leading Bike-Sharing Provider
PRINCETON, NJ –January 5, 2017 -- Edison Partners today announced leading a $10 million Series B financing round in Massachusetts-based Zagster, the leading provider of private and public-private bike-sharing systems in the U.S. Zagster will use the influx of funds to continue investing in the product roadmap, expanding staff, and implementing best practices across the organization.Zagster operates more than 140 fully hosted, turnkey bike-sharing programs in more than 35 states in the U.S. and Canada. Zagster’s unique business model and flexible technology platform enable bike sharing to thrive in a wide variety of markets — including small and medium-sized cities, universities, corporate campuses and residential properties. .
“Zagster represents an exciting opportunity for Edison to ride the millennial and urbanization trends, and invest in the sharing economy. The company has significant market momentum and a highly recurring-revenue model,” said Tom Vander Schaaff, General Partner at Edison Partners. “We were impressed by Zagster’s ability to simultaneously innovate and execute, and we believe our blend of capital, network and counsel will help the company continue to achieve exponential growth and category dominance.” Vander Schaaff, as well as Edison Director Network member, Chris Randles, will join the Zagster board of directors.
The bike-sharing market is just beginning to explode outside the top 25 metro environments. During 2016, Zagster achieved 300 percent growth in implemented programs, 400 percent growth in deployed bikes, and 300 percent growth in staff. The company also moved its headquarters to a larger space in Cambridge, Mass., and opened a satellite office in San Francisco. Zipbike, a Zagster partnership with car-sharing leader Zipcar, is the first nationally-sponsored bike-sharing program for colleges and universities.
“Edison Partners’ extensive network and operating experience is a key lever in helping us quickly build out our team and achieve our goal of becoming the national standard in bikeshare,” said Timothy Ericson, co-founder and CEO of Zagster. “We look forward to leveraging the active participation of Edison Partners as we extend our ‘Bike Share as a Service’ model across multiple markets in North America.”
Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, including 12 new investments made in 2016 from the firm's latest fund, Edison Partners VIII: Solovis, Terminus, Virtual Health, All Traffic Solutions, Axial, Jornaya, PreData, LookBookHQ, Big Cloud Analytics, ItemMaster, MoneyLion, and Zagster. Fifteen total investments have been from Edison VIII to date.
About Zagster
Zagster is the leading provider of private and public-private bike-sharing systems in the United States, operating more than 140 programs in more than 35 states. Its highly efficient business model allows the company to offer services across multiple underserved bike sharing markets, including small cities, suburbs, universities, businesses and commercial and residential properties. Zagster investors include Edison Partners, LaunchCapital; Fontinalis Partners (a strategic investment firm co-founded by Bill Ford); Clean Energy Venture Group; LaunchPad Venture Group; Otter Consulting and several leading Boston-area angel investors. Zagster aims to make biking the most loved form of transportation for people across the country. Learn more at www.zagster.com.
About Edison Partners
For 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey and build successful companies. Through the unique combination of expansion capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of strategic advisory, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to nurturing invention and creating value for growth stage businesses ($5 to $20 million in revenue) in financial technology, healthcare IT, enterprise IT, and marketing technology industries. Edison investment objectives also include: buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregate market value exceeding $5 billion. Its long-tenured team based in Princeton, NJ manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.