Posted on February 18, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Vinny Lingham raises $20 million for SynthaSite

I just received the following email from South African Entrepreneur, Vinny Lingham. I hope he doesn’t mind me republishing it but I feel it’s well worth spreading the news.

To all my friends, family & colleagues,

Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite. I have attached the press release for your benefit – there is also an article on TechCrunch today about the announcement: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/synthasite-gets-a-20-million-boost-for-simple-website-creation-software/

When we began building SynthaSite from our humble base in Cape Town, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.

In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco (where I am now based fulltime), keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals across both offices, supporting over one million users and growing rapidly.

I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning…

Now say what you want but to get an additional $20 million funding is a massive achievement – not for a South African but for anyone trying to get venture capital in Silicon Valley. As most know, there is an economic recession right now and people living in the Valley are simply not able to get any money.

Startups are closing down, VC is drying up and larger Internet players are retrenching staff at a rate of between 10% and 50%. I don’t know how Vinny did it but this is the biggest news out of Silicon Valley all year IMHO.

Vinny’s success is testament to his hard work and dedication and I’m extremely happy that he’s a real South African success story. I can’t wait to see what he has in store with SynthaSite over the coming months and years.