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DiggAtlanta B2B company MFG.com Inc. is expected to announce a $26 million venture funding on Wednesday, Jan. 9.
Fidelity Ventures of Boston and Fidelity Asia Ventures of Hong Kong led the investment, with participation from existing investor European Founders Fund of Munich.
Bezos Expeditions LLC, the investment fund of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, is also a stakeholder in the company but did not participate in the latest financing. Bezos Expeditions and European Founders Fund invested an undisclosed amount of money in MFG in February 2007.
MFG operates one of the largest global online marketplaces for manufacturing suppliers and buyers to do business. The company's platform matches up buyers and sellers of manufacturing services and industrial products, connecting the two parties while crossing geographical or technological barriers. Buyers can use the site for free, while sellers pay an annual subscription that averages about $6,000.
MFG plans to use its new capital to ramp up its global expansion and begin offering its services in a host of new markets, said CEO Mitch Free.
"We started in North America and have operations in China, but we still have some places we still need to go such as Eastern Europe, Japan, India and some other parts of Asia." Free said.
Free added that the contacts and advice Fidelity can provide in Asia were pivotal to the company choosing it as an investor.
"We were not at all looking for funding," says Free. "But the more I learned about Fidelity and their knowledge of the Asian market, I realized that Fidelity had a lot of strategic value, which is what led us to select them."
Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity and new board member, said his firm decided to back MFG because of "pattern recognition."
"It reminds us of one of our other portfolio companies -- Alibaba," said Cheng.
After reviewing the site and looking for others like it ( I didn't find anything even remotely close) I was very impressed! MFG.com has successfully pieced together a fragmented industry unlike no other. MFG has compiled a large amount of complex industry data within tidy manufacturing product categories along with insightful articles, industry contacts, news/ events and much more. The site is clean, concise and easy to navigate; an excellent model for others with their own web sites. The business model is stellar, I can't say enough... this isn't your fathers marketplace!
The overall business, site flow and its processes are a direct byproduct of the founders and backers countless years of hard work and experience. These modern day pioneers aren't afraid to fail, have perfected the art of calculated risk taking, are incredibly resourceful and when first getting their starts learned not to listen to everyones opinion about their concepts. Jeff wrote his Amazon biz plan in his car during a cross country trip to the west coast. Mr. Bezos and those lucky enough to be associated with him deserve all things good and have been an inspiration to many entrepreneurs including myself.
However, does a conflict of interest exist due to Fidelity Ventures stake in Alibaba? My opinion; only to those afraid of world domination.
Watch them grow! I gotta' go!