"We wanted more international exposure and a progressive VC - and that is exactly what Wellington, through Eric Archambeau, is delivering."
Lars Hinrichs
Founder, XING AG
Wellington contact:
Eric Archambeau
Europe’s No. 1 social network
for professionals
Xing is a leading service provider of social networking for business professionals. Founded in 2003, OPEN Business Club AG runs Xing.com with a subscription-based, highly scalable model enabling business professionals to maintain and expand their social networks within self-created privacy and communication rules, both locally and internationally. Six years after it started, Xing still manages to attract a huge number of new members - in the first half of 2009 alone the number of members grew by some 0.9 million to reach a total of 8 million business people. More importantly, members find an ever increasing value from a membership in the Network: average online activity per member continues to grow while hundreds of thousands of events are organized each year via the platform and churn remains at an extremely low level of less than 1% per year. Trust and usage from the members have helped the company become successful: during 2008 revenues rose by 80 percent from previous year to reach € 35.3 million and EBITDA nearly doubled to €12.8 million. Despite recession, this positive development continues in 2009.
Thanks to its early profitability, Xing did not need more than one financing round and quickly became ready for an IPO, one of the first Web 2.0 IPO worldwide. Xing sole private equity financing was led by Wellington Partners in 2005. With a vast choice of investors, Xing’s founders selected Wellington Partners for two reasons: Wellington Partners’ reputation and track record for helping European companies grow internationally and the presence of Eric Archambeau, one of Europe’s top entrepreneurial VCs who has been able to support and guide Xing as a board member throughout its hyper growth period, a period rich with organizational, acquisitions and strategic decisions to be made at hyper speed. Xing’s IPO took place in December 2006 on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, an event which marked the beginning of a new exciting development phase for Xing, with the continuing backing of Wellington Partners’ team.
