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Hoberman's new venture gets seed funding

Article Date:  Feb 04 2008 Nick Britton

Interior decoration website mydeco.com has received seed funding from a syndicate of investors including venture capital (VC) firms, corporate partners and private individuals. Mydeco’s founder and executive chairman is Brent Hoberman, who co-founded consumer travel website lastminute.com.

The exact amount of the funding was not disclosed, though SPARK Ventures tells GrowthBusiness it invested more than £5 million for a 25 per cent stake in the company. The SPARK team, which led the financing of lastminute.com in 1998, first invested in mydeco early last year.

Other investors include VC firm Arts Alliance (which also backed lastminute.com), the Rothschild family, and property design and investment company Yoo.

Hoberman says: ‘As a nation, we spend about £14 billion a year furnishing our homes, yet until now the internet hasn’t been used to bring it all together and make the customer’s shopping experience easier and more enjoyable.’

SPARK chairman Tom Teichman joined the board of mydeco as a non-executive director following the firm’s original investment in the buisness. He comments: ‘The mydeco team [has] a proven track record of building market-leading, sustainable online businesses.’

Mydeco’s CEO is David Kelly, the former chief operating officer of eBay Europe and lastminute.com. Martha Lane Fox and Paul Chudleigh, respectively the co-founder and former head of technical architecture at lastminute.com, take the roles of non-executive director and chief technology officer in the new business.

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