E-bike maker Cowboy raises a small funding round as it targets profitability next year
Cowboy has closed funding of around $5.5 million. With this recent funding round, Cowboy is now valued at €40 million on a pre-money basis.
Cowboy, the Brussels-based company that has been designing and selling electric bikes that you can see in major cities across Europe, has closed a small, strategic funding round of €5 million (around $5.5 million at current exchange rates). That includes €1 million in debt facilities.
While the amount isn’t as impressive as some of Cowboy’s previous fundraises, the company has been looking for an investor outside of the traditional European VC firms that have already invested in the startup — an investor that could potentially open new doors. As a result, Cypress Capital is leading the round. The Hong Kong-based investment firm has strong ties with Taiwan, which is a key hub for the global bicycle industry.
“A lot of our Asian-based suppliers are Taiwanese for historical reasons. We are growing the portion of our European suppliers continuously as we have about half of our parts that come from European suppliers. But the other half comes from Asia and mostly from Taiwanese suppliers,” Cowboy co-founder and CEO Adrien Roose (pictured above right) told TechCrunch.
Existing investors Index Ventures, Hardware Club, Future Positive Capital, Isomer and Exor are also participating once again in Wednesday’s funding round. Cowboy will also launch an equity crowdfunding campaign to give an opportunity to its customers to invest in the company.
“We’ve been raising somewhere between €10 [million] and €20 million a year over the last few years,” Roose said. “And yeah, the amount has gone down. Last year we raised €8 million in equity and €5 million of debt. And now we’re just announcing a €5 million raise, which is a fairly small raise for a company of our size.”