D5 Capital in content marketing deal
27 May 2013 – LONDON: Three-time entrepreneur Ed Bussey today announces the successful closure of £1 million investment in Quill, the pioneering content creation platform he founded in 2011.
The investment comes from Ariadne Capital’s Fund and leading entrepreneur investors, including Shakil Khan (Spotify, Summly, buy.at), Rupert Ashe (Graze, Videojug), Karen Hanton (toptable.com), Andrew Burge (King Content, iSUBSCRiBE), Nick Beare (BBC Worldwide, LGI), Peter Read (Techlightenment, Songkick) and Andrew Grahame (Mr & Mrs Smith).
Formerly called iTrigga, Quill provides businesses, including Shop Direct Group, Swiftcover/AXA, WPP and Aegis, with high quality, web-optimised content, on any topic and in any language, helping them increase both revenues and reputation.
In a move to capitalise on the rapidly increasing demand for digital content, Quill has developed a ground breaking technology platform, which it uses to manage the workflow and quality assurance of a global network of writers, editors and video producers, across 30+ languages. Quill offers a more efficient, hassle-free and cost-effective way of producing content than is possible in house or via traditional content production agencies, whilst guaranteeing that all of its content is of a consistently high “on brand” standard.
The funding will be used by Quill to grow its management team in the UK and overseas, to expand its specialist, multi-lingual writer and editor base to meet the rapidly increasing client demand for its services, and to accelerate the global roll out of its technology platform.
Prior to launching Quill, Ed was COO at mobile phone utility and social networking site ZYB, which was acquired by Vodafone in 2008 for €31.5m. Ed joined his first start-up team at online fashion retailer figleaves.com in 2000, which was sold to N Brown, the home shopping group, in October 2010 for £11.5m.
Ed Bussey, Founder and CEO of Quill, said:
“We have an outstanding investor base of leading digital entrepreneurs and we wanted to build on that investment approach with the ‘Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs’ ethos of Ariadne’s investment platform. Ariadne has backed some explosive growth companies over the past decade, and we’re excited to be joining their portfolio.”
Commenting on the investment, Julie Meyer, CEO of Ariadne Capital and Managing Partner of Ariadne Fund commented:
“Not only has Ed impressed me over the years – and I was always looking for an opportunity to work with him – but I loved the fact that he was ex-special forces. Compared to that, entrepreneurship is a piece of cake!”
