Warsaw Equity Group and TS Ventures exit Piwik Pro

Source: https://warsawequity.com/

October 31, 2023

After a six-year partnership with Piwik PRO, the financial investors Warsaw Equity Group and TS Ventures have sold their shares, enabling new development avenues for the company. The exit was part of a broader transaction, a merger of tech vendors Piwik PRO with Cookie Information, a Danish consent management platform. Cookie Information and Piwik PRO have a significant customer and partner base and an established position in their respective markets. This transaction aims to reinforce them even further through the operational and strategic alignment of both companies and technological synergies. The deal is backed by Kirk Kapital (family-office investing funds of the family of LEGO founder’s descendants), Piwik PRO’s founder Maciej Zawadziński, the management team, selected employees at Piwik PRO, and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark.

Piwik PRO is a fast-growing company that develops a platform for collecting, analyzing, and activating web & app data, being an alternative to Google Analytics. Providing complete, accurate data control throughout the customer journey to ensure the highest security and privacy standards is central to Piwik PRO's value proposition. Piwik PRO’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased by almost 80% in the last 12 months to 14m EUR ARR, while the number of clients grew by 90% to reach ca. 600.

Cookie Information is a privacy tech business headquartered in Denmark, providing a consent management platform (CMP) designed for mid-to-enterprise companies. With the vision of empowering companies to manage user consent effectively, its CMP enables customers to document users' consent for collecting and processing data on their websites, notably via tracking cookies. Cookie Information serves approximately 5,000 customers and holds a leading position in the Nordic market.

[Quote – Maciej Zawadziński, Founder of Piwik PRO]
"This is the third exit in my entrepreneurial career and paves the way for a new venture firm where I plan to help founders on a similar journey by leveraging the lessons learned from scaling Piwik PRO and previous ventures. Thank you to our amazing team, partners, loyal customers and investors who have all been instrumental in our success.
As my career takes a different path, I'll continue to stay close to Piwik PRO as an advisor and shareholder, and I firmly believe that the company's best days are yet to come.”

For Warsaw Equity Group, the recent transaction was the validation of the investment thesis of supporting software houses with their own proprietary tech product. The initial investment, apart from Piwik PRO involved also Clearcode, software house specializing in ad-tech and mar-tech technologies. Clearcode was acquired at the turn of 2021/2022 by ARICOMA Group, a Central European IT services provider. Last year, Warsaw Equity Group made a consecutive investment under that thesis, supporting 3Soft, a software house specializing in data management solutions, that developed Occubee, a provider of forecasting and replenishment software for the retail industry.

[Quote - Przemysław Danowski, Managing Partner of Warsaw Equity Group]
“We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to support Clearcode and Piwik PRO, along with their founder Maciej Zawadziński, in their development over the past few years. This was not a traditional venture capital or private equity project. Investing in software houses with a product is one of our key investment theses; having invested in 3Soft and Occubee, we are actively seeking similar projects to support”

Following Warsaw Equity Group’ investment in Clearcode, software services business with 0.8m EUR of annual EBITDA and its then-subsidiary Piwik PRO with 2m EUR ARR, the group underwent a strategic transformation. They were divided into two independent entities, each with distinct management and organizational culture, enabling focused growth. This shift propelled Piwik PRO to a sevenfold increase in ARR at 14m EUR, and Clearcode to a 109% increase in EBITDA, reaching 1.6m EUR by the end of 2021.

[Quote – Maciej Zawadziński, Founder of Piwik PRO]
“This journey might have been different without the early funding from Warsaw Equity and Tim Schumacher, who believed in our vision when we were not an "investable" company for traditional VC firms.”

Warsaw Equity Group achieved a 4.1x cash-on-cash return and 25% IRR on the joint transaction (Piwik PRO and Clearcode).

About Kirk: A Danish family office, managing the private capital of Kirk Johansen family, the descendant of Ole Kirk Christiansen, who founded LEGO. Kirk Kapital specialises in financial investments and strategic minority investments.

About Warsaw Equity Group: A Polish venture capital and private equity investment company, that has been investing up to 10m EUR in one project to support growth of the companies. WEG invests solely private money coming from the funds of its founders and its management team.