Former PayPal Executive Tyler Hoffman Joins RichRelevance as VP of Sales
Sales veteran to lead rapidly-expanding sales team to deliver next-generation personalized recommendations to top retailers worldwide
San Francisco – November 19, 2008 – RichRelevance™, the leading provider of next-generation personalized product recommendations that enhance the shopping experience and drive sales, today announced a wide-scale expansion of its sales team, led by Vice President of Sales Tyler Hoffman, who previously spent seven years building and running PayPal’s enterprise sales team. Mr. Hoffman will direct RichRelevance’s expanding team of seasoned sales representatives, sales engineers and account managers.
“Tyler is a fantastic sales executive with deep experience working with the world’s top online retailers,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “With executive sales background at innovative companies like CNET and PayPal, Tyler clearly understands the value RichRelevance provides to retailers, which now more than ever need the best tools to improve the shopping experience and boost revenues.”
Hoffman brings over a decade of retail-focused internet sales expertise to RichRelevance, where he will be responsible for developing and servicing top online retail customers, helping them obtain significant sales lift through the RichRelevance SaaS platform. Prior to RichRelevance, Tyler was head of PayPal’s enterprise sales team, with a focus on internet retail and the services sectors, as well as market development of strategic categories such as the airline vertical. Before joining PayPal, Tyler was Sales Director for San Francisco-based Internet pioneer CNET, where his four-year tenure included work on CNET’s development of Shopper.com, one of the first comparison-shopping engines.
“In today’s competitive online retail market, retailers are seeking powerful tools to efficiently boost sales. RichRelevance’s recommendations platform is one of the best offerings on the market to help retailers sell more and sell smarter,” said Hoffman. “RichRelevance is assembling a stellar sales team of seasoned retail experts, well-armed to help merchants improve their businesses.”
Hoffman joins RichRelevance at a time of rapid growth, as the company continues to attract top talent from leading Internet and e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com, CleverSet, Microsoft, CVS.com, and Redfin.com. In the past six months alone, RichRelevance has doubled its staff and continues to hire aggressively to meet the skyrocketing demand for its SaaS-based personalized offering. In July, the company welcomed Todd Pearson, former Vice President of Sales at PayPal, as Chief Customer Officer, and in October hired Darren Vengroff, former Principal Engineer at Amazon.com, as Chief Scientist. In addition to staff expansion, the company recently added a fifth data center to its cloud computing network architecture to support its growing list of top-tier clients, including two of the ten largest online retailers in the world.
RichRelevance is the market and technology leader in next-generation personalized recommendations for leading eCommerce sites, including Sears.com. Founded by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, the company’s products increase sales by 10-30% by personalizing the shopping experience through targeted merchandising. The RichRelevance recommendations platform outperforms popular collaborative filtering-based solutions through the use of more than 15 recommendation types, cross-placement optimization, and a closed-feedback loop. The SaaS-based offering is easily integrated, and empowers merchandisers through a robust, patent-pending suite of dashboard controls. The company is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco, California.
