PRESS RELEASE London Monday 3 March 2014: UK-based travel startup Top10.com has closed a Series B funding round worth $8m led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Forward Partners and Idealab.
Top10.com evaluates millions of hotel data points - including review scores, popularity, location and price - to identify the Top 10 hotels for customers in any destination in the world. Instead of having to scroll through hundreds of available hotels and user reviews, Top10 smartly finds just the best 10.
Top10's 'hotel shortlists' aggregate content from services like Foursquare and Google Street View to make its results informative and easy to digest. The service also compares live prices from major booking sites including Booking.com, Expedia and LateRooms to ensure customers always get the best price available.
This streamlined approach has helped the company grow rapidly over the last 12 months, and it is now driving over $1million per month in hotel bookings.
Top 10 currently employs 14 staff based in London. The new investment round will be used to build the team, with an emphasis on growing its engineering talent, as well as expand into new European territories through 2014.
Tom Leathes, co-founder and CEO of Top10.com, said: "We're thrilled to be working with Balderton Capital and our existing investors to help us build a better way to book the right hotel.
"Hotel booking and travel review sites contain an overwhelming amount of information. Top10.com cuts through this noise by simplifying the whole experience. We limit results to just 10 hotels whilst providing a wealth of relevant information in a bite-sized format.
"Our focus on mobile means customers get a great experience no matter what device they're using. Our growth from zero to $1 million per month in bookings shows that users love our smarter, more personalised approach," he continued.
Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at Balderton Capital, added: "Finding the perfect hotel online remains a frustrating and time-consuming process for holidaymakers and business travelers alike. The Top10 team are developing new technology systems to confront these issues which we believe could transform the online travel booking industry.
"We love investing in businesses where complex technical challenges are tackled behind the scenes, whilst leaving customers with a simple and satisfying experience, both online and on mobile, which leads to almost effortless transactions. Tom and the team are an exceptional set of repeat entrepreneurs."
Daniel Waterhouse joins the Top10.com board alongside Sonali De Rycker of Accel Partners.
Top10 started in 2011 as a recommendation platform focused on music, entertainment and travel, with its services including a popular Spotify app for collaborative music playlists. In late 2012, the company narrowed its focus onto the hotel market and launched Top10.com in February 2013.
For more information about Top10.com, please contact:
Ben Camm-Jones
[email protected]
020 7100 1333
07515 877 621
For Balderton Capital, please contact:
Carmen Murray or Ellie Sweeney, Powerscourt
[email protected] / [email protected]
020 7324 0496
About Top10.com
Top10.com is a brand new way to find and book your perfect hotel. The site analyses hundreds of thousands of hotels to find your Top 10 hotels in any destination. Top10.com compares prices from all the major booking sites to ensure customers get the best deals available.
Started in 2011, Top10.com is a team of 14 based in London's EC1 and is backed by a number of influential technology investors, including Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Founder Collective, Forward Partners, Idealab and Shakil Khan.
Top10.com was founded by Tom Leathes, Harry Jones and Alex Buttle - an entrepreneurial team with three successful exits behind them, the most recent being the UK's biggest price comparison site for broadband and mobile phones, which was sold to uSwitch.com in 2011.
About Balderton Capital
Balderton Capital is one of the largest venture capital firms in Europe, committed to finding and helping talented entrepreneurs build great companies. Based in London, the firm manages more than $2.1 billion.
Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 100 companies, principally across Europe. Notable realised investments include NaturalMotion (the mobile gaming developer, sold to Zynga in 2014), Betfair (the online betting exchange, 2010 IPO), LOVEFiLM (the home entertainment subscription service, sold to Amazon in 2011), MySQL (the open-source database software, sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008) and YOOX Group (the online retailer of leading fashion brands, IPO in 2009). The current portfolio includes innovative companies such as 3D Hubs, Globoforce, Kobalt, Openet, Scytl, Talend, The Hut Group, Wonga, Wooga and WorldStores.
About Accel Partners
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, London, New York City and Bangalore, as well as in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel. Accel has invested in over 500 companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, Cloudera, ComScore, Dropbox, Facebook, Groupon, Imperva, Kayak, Playfish, QlikTech, Spotify, Supercell, and Wonga. For more information, visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/accel.
