A few years ago we had a discussion with Oz Alon, CEO and co-founder of HoneyBook, and he told us back then that the young startup wasn’t aiming to be the next billion dollar company, but rather “the next $8.6 billion Unicorn.” Today, we see the company making major strides towards that goal.
HoneyBook closed a massive $155 million Series D round. The investment was led by Durable Capital Partners, with participation from Tiger Global Management, Battery Ventures, Zeev Ventures, and Dick Costolo, who is maybe more familiar as former Twitter CEO. The round also saw existing investors OurCrowd, Citi Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners get in on the action. According to the company, a small part of the capital will be used to allow employees to sell their holdings.
Everything freelancers need
This current round puts HoneyBook’s valuation north of the $1 billion mark, meaning we have yet another new member joining the once exclusive Israeli Unicorn club.
HoneyBook have developed an all-in-one small business/freelance platform, which should cover all their work needs: From customer delivery, and communication, to sending contracts, price lists, invoices, payments, and so much more. While chatting with Geektime, key execs from the company explained that the company manages over a billion dollars in transactions annually. The company is currently headquartered in San Francisco, with R&D in Tel Aviv.
It all started at a Tel Aviv coffee shop
Oz Alon told Geektime in the past that it all started after meeting Gil Ben-Artzy, co-founder of Upwest Labs, at a café in Tel Aviv. Alon, a young entrepreneur with zero experience in the tech world, laid out his idea to Ben-Artzy, who immediately asked if he could get on a plane, along with his partners, and join what was back then a startup accelerator in California. Oz, together with his wife, and CTO Dror dropped everything, joined the program and founded HoneyBook.
Fast forward to 2020, when a large chunk of the workforce had to adapt to a new reality and freelancers needed help with the bureaucracy - In a year of global pandemic, companies like HoneyBook made bank, as the company reported both tripling revenue and doubling new customers in 2020. Now to our question of where the company is headed after raising such a big number? We were told that “going public is not the goal, but a business move which will be tested down the road.”
The company was founded in 2013 by CEO Oz Alon, Chief of Creative & Vision Naama Alon, and CTO Dror Shimoni. HoneyBook currently has 100 employees split between the U.S. and Israel. The company has raised $248 million to date.
