Paddle, the software sales platform founded by a Thiel Fellow, raises $12.5M

Paddle, a U.K. startup that offers software companies a single platform for the entire software sales process — including trials and licenses, payments, and analytics — has raised $12.5 million in further funding.

Leading the Series B round is enterprise-focussed VC Notion, with participation from existing investors BGF Ventures and Kindred Capital. MacPaw, the independent Mac software developer, also joined the round, a move that looks a good strategic fit and builds on Paddle’s recent acquisition of MacPaw’s DevMate.

On a self-proclaimed mission to “transform the way that software is sold,” Paddle’s platform tackles the problem whereby software developers typically need to piece together systems from multiple different suppliers in order to sell their wares online.

This spans a number of interlinked tasks, such as trials and licenses, insights and analysis, payment gateways, taxes, internationalization, which often requires relying on multiple third-party APIs. The Paddle platform, instead, consolidates all of these tools into a single offering.

Christian Owens, CEO and founder of Paddle and previous Thiel Fellow, says the current software stack is “prehistoric,” meaning that both small and large software vendors have had to live with a fragmented approach to selling their wares. The 40-person startup, which plans to grow to 100 people by the end of 2018, is helping change that.

Chrys Chrysanthou, Partner at Notion, talks up Paddle’s ability to “abstract the complex puzzle of the commerce layer for fast growth software companies” to enable them to focus on their core business of developing products.

In a statement, Oleksandr Kosovan, Founder of MacPaw and now a Paddle board member, echoes the same sentiment: “MacPaw’s mission is to improve and perfect user experience within products, however there have long been limited opportunities to control the entire flow, and deliver the best checkout experience. We are really excited to join Paddle in their effort towards building a new and effective method of selling software products online.”

To that end, Paddle says it will invest in features that focus on insight to help software companies better capture sales-related data. Specifically, it wants its customers to understand how factors such as pricing, checkout flow, customer behaviour, and location country correlate, in a bid to help them boost revenue.

The London-based startup is also planning further integrations to other areas of a software company’s business, so that marketing, product, support, and finance can connect to its “sales operating system”. In addition, it will roll out more local payment methods, and SDKs for Mac and Windows products.