Why I decided to build RAZOR: Europe’s Amazon FBA Acquirer & new-age Consumer Holding

Why I decided to to build Razor (& why you should join us!)

1st Reason: Ecommerce is awesome.

The emergence of E-commerce has reduced barriers for entrepreneurs to startup and create meaningful businesses online. And Amazon has possibly been the single largest wealth-creation machine ever to have existed – not just for its investors but also for a vast ecosystem of 2.5 million merchants, who sold goods worth a whopping EUR 200 billion globally in 2019 alone. With the US being the largest country on Amazon’s marketplace, followed by Germany as the 2nd largest market.

Most of these merchants have built their E-commerce business from the ground up; businesses that, in a relatively short span of time, have developed into million-dollar businesses by providing superior and often innovative products, as well as a delightful customer experience.

Especially the last months have been a new catalyst for the E-commerce sector amid the ongoing pandemic; the online penetration of the retail sector accelerated even further, and more importantly triggered fundamental behavioural shifts in our society, which in my opinion represents the dawn of a new online shopping age. 

E-commerce has already been a game-changer globally, and even after spending my last 10 years in this sector, I am a firm believer that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg right now – the opportunities ahead as well the positive impact that we can have are keeping my heart rate up, every single day.

2nd Reason: Everybody wins.

While many successful businesses have been established on platforms like Amazon, the people behind these businesses often don’t want and/or don’t have the resources to deal with the increased complexity of scaling their operations beyond a certain point. And until now, this meant that these merchants are running businesses with slowing or even stagnating growth. This is where we, Razor, come in; we are giving selected FBA merchants a liquidity opportunity – a way to capture the value that they have created with all the hard work that they’ve put into their businesses – and by doing so, we’re turning many merchants into cash-millionaires overnight.

We focus on profitable Amazon FBA companies that have consistently proven to deliver superior product quality as well as outstanding customer satisfaction. After buying these merchants, we deploy new growth capital and use our world-class e-commerce experts to lift these businesses onto a new stage along their development curves, with the ultimate goal of creating new power brands which millions of consumers will live with, and love. 

So in a nutshell: merchants win, consumers win, Razor wins. 

3rd Reason: Team work makes the dream work.

My fellow founding team members and I live and breathe E-commerce, and have spent the last decade building market-leading consumer tech companies. I founded StalkBuyLove, India’s largest D2C fast-fashion private label, and ran country operations for Westwing, the listed European leader in home & living Ecommerce. Given my strong commitment to shaping the Ecommerce sector, Forbes has included me on their 30under30 ranking of “Retail & Ecommerce“ leaders in 2017.

My co-founder Jonas Diezun previously founded two direct-to-consumer businesses with Franksmile as well as Radice. Previously he served as CMO at Konux and worked at McKinsey & Company. He is an alumnus of the Technical University of Munich (CDTM). We are complemented by our strong and experienced founding team members: Christoph Felix Gamon (VP Investments), Dr. Oliver Dlugosch (VP Operations) and Shrestha Chowdhury (VP Technology & Analytics). Christoph was a Venture Director at Rocket Internet and TMT Investment Banker at UBS before. Oliver is a physicist turned McKinsey consultant and completed his PhD summa cum laude. Shrestha studied Computer Science at Stanford University and has led the technology and analytics functions in e-commerce companies.

4th Reason: Best investors (& supporters).

We raised EUR 4 million in our seed round, to which further substantial acquisition financing lines are being added. With 468 Capital and Presight Capital, we have been able to win two global VC funds as investors, who contribute their extensive e-commerce expertise as well as their networks of institutional star investors. In addition, a strong lineup of prominent angel investors joined this round, including serial entrepreneurs & investors such as Mato Peric (CARS24, Choco, Scalable Capital etc.) and Roman Khan (Linjer, Raycon, Lazada etc.) as well as capital market experts such as Manuel Stotz (CEO Kingsway Capital), Stefan Jung (CIO Antler), the Scalable Capital founders Erik Podzuweit & Florian Prucker, and others. I firmly believe and know from experience that not just the founders, but the entire shareholder group is crucial for a company to succeed, and I am thrilled to be on a journey with this stellar lineup of supporters.

5th Reason: Potentially you!

These are exciting times! We have ambitious targets in front of us and our experienced founder team is ready to rumble. We have a real shot at building one of the largest consumer goods holdings and we are grabbing this opportunity with both hands. On our path we are looking for likeminded people to join us and I would be delighted to tell you more about us if you decide to reach out. My email is: [email protected]. We are based in Berlin.