Openclassrooms, publisher of Site du Zéro, a community media positioned on structured premium content with 2 million unique visitors per month, has completed its first round with Alven Capital for €1.2 million. The funds raised will be used to accelerate growth and launch new products.
Openclassrooms welcomes Alven Capital during its first round with a capital increase of 1.2 M€. PAX Corporate Finance, the company’s counsel, has received strong expressions of interest from several leading investors. “Alven Capital is an investment fund specialized in Web companies that is particularly attentive to our needs. Alven Capital’s team will share with us its network of entrepreneurs and will provide us with advice and support to continue the development of our company” explains Pierre Dubuc, President of Openclassrooms.
Le Site du Zéro started in 1999 with a desire to make people discover computing without initial knowledge, starting from “zero”, and is characterized by a distinct editorial line as well as “premium” and plethoric contents. With 2 million unique visitors, acquired only by word of mouth, Le Site du Zéro is the media reference of the IT community.
The company Openclassrooms, publisher of the Site du Zéro, was founded in 2007 when the two directors and co-founders, Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra, began their engineering studies. “Mathieu launched the Zero Site when he was only 13, I joined him in the adventure 3 years later. Together, we wanted to perpetuate the Site du Zéro and we created Openclassrooms for this, in 2007, when we were both students. At the end of our course, we invested ourselves completely in the company and we continue to develop it on a daily basis with our team” explains Pierre Dubuc.
From 2 employees at the end of 2009, the company currently has 20 employees and plans to recruit 10 new staff by the end of the year for editorial, sales and community management functions.
“The excellent quality of the very rich content accessible on the Zero Site has made it, over the years, the reference medium for all computer enthusiasts. We are delighted to have been able, through PAX Corporate Finance, to meet the talented Openclassrooms team, and we look forward to supporting the managers in the development of their ambitious project. “adds Jeremy Uzan, Investment Director at Alven Capital.
