Harding

Some of Seattle's most prominent angel investors and venture capital firms are lining up behind Bonanzle, a 2-year-old company which has created a fast-growing (and profitable) marketplace where small merchants can sell everything from purses and antiques to jewelry and collectibles. Until now, founder Bill Harding has bootstrapped the startup, growing it into an up-and-coming force in e-commerce with 250,000 registered users and nearly two million unique visitors a month.

"For 'normal' startups, raising money from investors is usually one of the first matters to get taken care of," writes Bonanzle founder Bill Harding in a blog post. "If not for the strong support of our community and dear old Google search, we would have needed to do this a year ago. But because of Bonanzle's fast-spreading reputation (and thus sales), we have been able to bide our time and wait until we saw a deal that was simply too good to pass up."

That deal has now arrived. Bonanzle's new $1 million round includes a who's who of Seattle investors. Ignition Partners, Voyager Capital, Founder's Co-op and Curious Office Partners joined the round, as did prominent angels such as BuddyTV founder Andy Liu, Wetpaint founder Ben Elowitz and Ontela co-founder Dan Shapiro. And it wasn't an entirely Seattle syndicate as Matrix Partners of Silicon Valley also invested.

Geoff Entress, a prominent angel and venture partner at Voyager, is joining the company's board as part of the deal. In a release, Entress noted that the company's sales have grown 300 percent in the past year, but the growth has been constrained by a lack of development talent.

With the new capital, Entress said that Bonanzle will be able to "accelerate development to capture that opportunity." In his blog post, Harding makes a commitment to sellers to create a "user experience that continues to improve, and continues to deliver an ever-growing number of buyers over time."

Bonanzle certainly faces plenty of competition, with the startup often drawing comparisons to eBay. But Harding said he's actually going in the opposite direction.

"Rather than building around the largest so-called 'power sellers,' we’ve created a marketplace that caters to smaller merchants who are passionate about a few, carefully selected items," said Harding, who previously worked at Amaze Entertainment.

Other players in the space include Etsy and 1000 Markets, a Seattle startup backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and True Ventures.