Additionally, it witnessed an 80% growth in revenue for the last quarter of 2023 compared to the previous year. The investors include venture capital fund J&T Ventures led by Adam Kočík and Martin Kešner, with participation from existing investor Reflex Capital led by Ondřej Fryc. The funds will be primarily allocated to marketing, product development, and fostering the growth of the developer community. As part of the investment round, the startup also increased the ESOP pool for employee incentives to a share of about 15%.
„Our last investment was secured in 2019, and Apify has been growing solely from its own profits in recent years. However, we now see an opportunity in the market to accelerate growth, which is why we have decided to seek further investment. Given our size, we opted for a relatively modest amount, as we didn’t want to disrupt the company with a massive influx of capital. This allows us to maintain our financial efficiency and unique company culture while keeping our options open for future investments or exits. Our current goal is to demonstrate our ability to convert capital into economically efficient growth, attract new customers, and scale our business. Once we achieve this, it may make sense for us to seek a large investment from global VC funds and attempt to become the next Czech unicorn,“ says Jan Čurn, founder and CEO of Apify.
„We have been following the journey of Apify with enthusiasm since 2016 when we first met Honza and Jakub. In that time, they have built cutting-edge technology, a strong brand and an international network of customers. As a result, they are now in a great position to take advantage of the huge opportunities that are opening up. We believe we can help them grow into a global leader,“ says Martin Kešner from J&T Ventures.
„We have been supporting Apify for eight years, and we have been sure of its potential every step of the way,“ says Ondřej Fryc from Reflex Capital. „Honza and Jakub have already built a global business with MRR (monthly recurring revenue) in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars that is now rocketing. We see the investment as an opportunity to further support this growth,“ he adds.
Marketing and developer community development
The company’s founders, Jan Čurn and Jakub Balada, decided to seek outside capital to transition the company from a profit-oriented to a growth-oriented mindset. They still maintain a majority stake in the company. One of the goals of using the investment is to boost the development, product, data analytics, marketing, and other areas of the teams. Another goal is to increase direct investment in marketing and expand Apify’s products to new customers.
„We want to bring Apify to more developers and companies around the world. That’s why, in addition to marketing, we’re also investing in growing our community of developers who develop, maintain, and sell web scraping solutions called Actors on our platform. Our long-term ambition is to build the world’s largest marketplace where companies and developers can find ready-made cloud automation solutions that other developers are building and selling,“ concludes Čurn.
