Congratulations to iZettle on its acquisition by PayPal

Index Ventures would like to thank both the founders, Jacob and Magnus, and all the 500 employees who have worked to build such strong business. This is another notable success for the Stockholm startup ecosystem following other major recent successes for King and Spotify. 

Index Ventures led the Series A investment in iZettle in Summer 2011 and participated in many of the subsequent financings. At the time we believed strongly the thesis that smaller businesses could be empowered to grow quicker if they had better payment acceptance systems at good commercial terms. We felt the iZettle proposition and product were well designed and that the team were committed and ambitious to build a substantial company. What has impressed us most since then has been the resilience and tenacity of the team in overcoming many challenges along the journey.

While the iZettle vision may be simple and straightforward to grasp, helping small businesses get paid and sell smarter, to deliver upon it requires excellent execution across a very diverse set of initiatives:

• Designing and building hardware and software components and ensuring they work together seamlessly and reliably;
• Building an ecosystem of banking and distribution partners;
• Creating a compelling and quick onboarding experience;
• Building a B2B sales and marketing funnel across online and offline channels;
• Complying with a multitude of financial services regulations and card scheme rules;
• Extending the software offering into point-of-sale and eCommerce solutions;
• Extending the financial services offering beyond payments into business loans and other financial products.

All of the above in addition to the perennial startup challenges of team-building and capital-raising have always been tackled systematically and energetically by the founders and team at iZettle. We thank you for allowing us to be part of this journey and wish you every success for the future.