Content marketing platform, Yotpo has looked to change the face of the eCommerce industry with a landmark $51.0 million Funding Round . The group believes that there is substantial room for growth, even as big box stores continue to shut their doors for good.
As a leading user-generated content platform, Yotpo allows businesses to collect customer content like reviews, photos, and Q&A, harnessing these to build a stronger brand and better customer experience. Yotpo has identified these as the real differentiators in an ecosystem where Amazon is ubiquitous.
“We’re living in a post-Amazon world where even big, established brands are collapsing because it’s impossible to compete with Amazon on price or fulfillment. The only way commerce brands can compete is through customer experience and building an authentic brand that people truly care about and talk about,” explained Yotpo’s CEO and co-Founder, Tomer Tagrin.
Established partnerships and industry presence
The company works with thousands of brands worldwide, from emerging startups to established enterprises, like TYR, Staples, and Everlast, as well as digitally native, vertical commerce brands like MVMT Watches, UnTUCKit, and Brooklinen. Their focus on customer content as the foundation for powerful consumer experiences has helped these brands become customer favorites.
Tomer Tagrin
According to Mr. Tagrin, “The most important factor for a company's success or failure today is not products, it’s not service (although both are extremely important). It’s your ability to market to consumers on scale. It’s your ability to get your consumer to market your brand. And that’s a very, very tough job. But it's the only way you'll survive. The future will not be brands marketing for customers, but customers marketing for brands."
Over the past five years, Yotpo has begun to silently dominate brand commerce marketing by providing the only end-to-end solution that lets brands collect, curate, manage, respond to, and promote every type of consumer content via a single platform. The company has quadrupled sales in the last 20 months alone.
New funding round
This has set the stage for one of their biggest announcements to date, following the completion of a $51 million Series D financing round led by Access Industries (ClalTech) – bringing total funding to $101 million.
The financing round included full participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLC, Vintage Partners, Blumberg Capital, Rhodium and 2B Angels. Consequently, Vertex Ventures joined the round as a new investor. Daniel Shinar, Access Industries' Head of Israeli tech investments and ClalTech CEO, will join Yotpo's Board of Directors.
“We’ve been working with Yotpo since 2014. We have gained enormous respect for what co-founders Tomer Tagrin and Omri Cohen have built – a company with a unique culture and exceptional Execution skills. When we had the opportunity to double down, we didn’t hesitate. Yotpo is answering the growing demand for an integrated user-generated content platform and they are becoming the next generation marketing platform for B2C companies,” noted Mr. Shinar.
NYC! We're attending and presenting @FounderMade on November 17 - will we see you there?? ? #CDS2017 https://t.co/peGBsdDnkx pic.twitter.com/70mDz9hJoO
— Yotpo (@Yotpo) November 7, 2017
Mr. Tagrin noted the financing will be used to meet the demand from high-growth commerce brands for an integrated user-generated content platform and to accelerate product innovation using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
Ultimately, “For us, AI isn’t a buzzword, but a core technology already powering our solution today. We’re also seeing a real opportunity to incorporate deep learning to solve the most pressing challenges of commerce businesses. We’re just touching the surface of the potential here, and we’ll have exciting news coming soon,” reiterated Mr. Tagrin.
The company also plans to use the funding to continue global expansion, with the opening of a second US office in Salt Lake and the addition of 150 employees, to bring total headcount to over 400, across their Tel Aviv, New York, and London offices.
