- SoundCommerce — a data platform provider that was founded by Eric Best and Jared Stiff — recently raised $6.5 million in seed funding
SoundCommerce is a data platform provider company that recently raised $6.5 million in a seed round of funding. This round of funding was led by Defy Partners with participation from Voyager Capital of Seattle, Stage Venture Partners of Los Angeles, the Alliance of Angels, and a number of other notable investors.
This round of funding coincides with SoundCommerce’s public launch as a data platform for commerce operations. And the funding will accelerate the company’s hiring, platform development, and customer engagement.
What does SoundCommerce do? SoundCommerce is an Operations Data Platform (ODP) for consumer brands and retailers that transform customer experience through better decisioning across merchandising, supply, fulfillment, delivery, and customer service.
SoundCommerce was founded by CEO Eric Best and CTO Jared Stiff, both of whom are industry veterans with previous exits to Amazon.com, Liberty Interactive, and the public equity markets. Best was previously CSO at CommerceHub through its IPO, CEO and founder at Mercent and Morse Best Innovation, and cofounder at Impresys, Emercis, and MindCorps. And Stiff was founder of JS Software Engineering, Director of Engineering at CommerceHub, VP of Development at PetPlace.com, founder/CTO at Emercis, and founder/CTO at MindCorps.
“Delivering amazing consumer experiences is incredibly hard — it’s the reason brands that directly serve consumers are worth ten times their wholesaler counterparts,” said Best in a statement. “You’ve acquired the shopper, and now it’s time to deliver on your customer promise. This is where SoundCommerce comes in.”
SoundCommerce tracks real-time operational events, profitability and customer lifetime value to answer questions fundamental to cross-channel and direct-to-consumer success including
“Are we meeting our delivery promise?”
“What’s driving and detracting from profitability?”
“Are assortment, inventory and promotions aligned with demand?”
“Which markets, channels, and customers should we prioritize?”
”How should we treat this customer to balance profit with experience and LTV?”
“For omnichannel brands like Lucky Brand navigating the market today, both shopper expectations and operational complexity are higher than ever,” added Lucky Brand (a SoundCommerce customer) COO Michael Relich. “SoundCommerce helps us manage the business to the key metrics and service levels that drive our profitability and customer experience across channels.”
SoundCommerce is able to connect data between systems and partners, monitor operations, enable business intelligence, and drive machine learning-enabled predictive decisioning. And the platform is integrated with major commerce systems such as Amazon.com, Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, StitchLabs, NetSuite, Dynamics 365, ReCharge, and Salsify as well as common EDI formats and leading parcel post carriers.
“SoundCommerce is poised to capitalize on the value of operations data, beginning with the massive and growing consumer goods and D2C industries,” explained Neil Sequeira — co-founder and managing director at Defy Partners. “While everyone else prioritizes marketing, Amazon.com has proven that modern, intelligent operations are paramount to retail success.”
Sequeira is joining SoundCommerce’s board of directors in conjunction with the funding round.
