richrelevance hired DARREN VENGROFF as chief scientist. Vengroff previously served as principal engineer at Amazon.com.
Darren Vengroff was named chief scientist at San Francisco’s Richrelevance. He previously was principal engineer at Amazon.com Inc.
RichRelevance continues to attract the best technical and eCommerce talent to execute on its vision of next-generation personalization, recommendations and merchandising
San Francisco – October 15, 2008 – RichRelevance™, the leader in next-generation personalized recommendations that enhance the shopping experience and drive sales, today announced that renowned computer scientist and technology industry veteran Darren Vengroff has joined the company as Chief Scientist. Vengroff, who drove several high-profile personalization, navigation and targeting innovations as Principal Engineer at Amazon.com, will lead RichRelevance’s technical strategy and development as the company continues to advance the state-of-the-art in online personalization and merchandising.
Vengroff’s appointment comes at a time of rapid growth for RichRelevance, as the world’s largest retailers embrace its personalized recommendations platform to enhance the customer experience and boost sales. The company recently raised a round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and has more than doubled its staff in the last six months. In June, RichRelevance welcomed former PayPal executive Todd Pearson as Chief Customer Officer.
“We’re thrilled to welcome an executive of Darren’s caliber and experience to RichRelevance, as we continue to build a team that is laser focused on the needs and goals of large retailers,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “As we’ve grown, we’ve consistently added the best talent from companies such as Amazon.com, eBay and Overstock to help us in our quest to provide retailers with a recommendations platform that delivers the highest sales lift in the industry. With his background at Amazon.com, Darren clearly understands that retailers need every weapon they can get their hands on to stay ahead of the competition – and he has the technological know-how to deliver products that help retailers succeed.”
Vengroff, who was recently named a Top 25 Innovator & Entrepreneur by Seattle Business Monthly Magazine, has spent his career building world-class computer systems. As Chief Scientist of RichRelevance, Vengroff will be responsible for all of the company’s analytical and machine learning development – from high-level strategy and analytics, to strategic implementation plans. He will also work closely with RichRelevance CEO and Amazon.com veteran David Selinger to develop new methodologies that increase sales and enhance brand loyalty for retailers.
“Personalization technology has been around for over a decade, but RichRelevance is the first company to finally deliver on the promise of a personalized shopping experience to all,” said Vengroff. “This speaks to the power of the technology – and to the strength of the executive bench. I’m excited to join David and the rest of the top-notch team to make the RichRelevance platform even more indispensable to retailers, especially as they brace for a challenging economic period.”
Prior to joining RichRelevance, Vengroff was CTO and co-founder of Pelago, where he launched Whrrl, a breakthrough location-based mobile social networking application. Before Pelago, he served as Principal Engineer at Amazon.com with responsibilities in personalization, automated email targeting, time-series analysis, content platform architecture, attribute-based navigation, search, and deployment systems for the eCommerce giant.
Prior to Amazon.com, Vengroff spent six years at Goldman Sachs. As a vice president, he was responsible for developing and managing trading and risk management systems that priced billions of dollars of derivative products for the fixed income, currency and commodity businesses. Earlier in his career, Vengroff built the first microprocessor simulator capable of booting and running a commercial operating system under load. Vengroff holds an Sc.M. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University, where he studied I/O-efficient algorithms with Jeff Vitter, and a B.S.E. in Computer Science with Highest Honors from Princeton University.
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.
Selected Partners will Co-Market and Integrate RichRelevance Products
San Francisco – September 15, 2008 – RichRelevance™, the exclusive provider of next-generation personalized recommendations for eCommerce businesses, launched its partnership program today (RichRelevance.com/partners), through which selected best-of-breed eCommerce technology providers will integrate with RichRelevance’s on-site and in-email personalization products for an enhanced cross-vendor solution.
With the introduction of this program, RichRelevance customers will benefit from easier integration of the RichRelevance product, higher ROI on existing partner implementations, and market innovations as RichRelevance works closely with its partners. The program currently features partners in the categories of eCommerce platform, ratings & reviews, and email.
“By enabling other vendors to integrate their services with our platform, we are delivering significant value to all of our combined retail clients,” said RichRelevance CEO David Selinger. “Through these integrated solutions, retailers will see a greater return on investment with higher conversion rates, an improved customer experience, and faster time to market.”
For participating eCommerce vendors, integration with the RichRelevance platform offers a way to enhance product offerings, which in turn strengthens relationships with existing customers while offering a further differentiated solution to prospective customers. Internet Retailer found that nearly half of online merchants polled are prioritizing recommendations on their sites in the upcoming year, making integration with RichRelevance a priority for vendors working to exceed customer expectations.
“The launch of this partnership program allows us to further enhance and diversify our product offerings, differentiating us in the market and giving merchants a powerful way to materially boost sales with limited integration,” said Alan Littman, CMO of VCommerce, one of RichRelevance’s launch partners. “We’ve completed implementation of the RichRelevance product, and are eager to begin offering our customers double-digit sales lift through personalized recommendations.”
The program’s launch partners are Bazaarvoice, DMinSite, Experian CheetahMail, LaGarde, Novator, PowerReviews, Responsys, and VCommerce.
RichRelevance is the exclusive provider of next-generation personalized recommendations for leading eCommerce sites, including Sears.com. 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.
by Interview with David Selinger
David Selinger, CEO, Rich Velevance, talks about how to personalize your offerings by visitor to sell more and make more.
Series C round will be invested in infrastructure and staff as company gains market leadership
San Francisco – August 25, 2008 – RichRelevance™, the leading provider of next generation personalized recommendations for ecommerce sites, announced today it has raised Series C venture capital financing led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with contributions from previous investors including Greylock Partners, Tugboat Ventures and others, bringing investor financing to over $9 million. The Series C funding will enable RichRelevance to fully support a growing customer base by aggressively investing in the company’s infrastructure and team.
“We are expanding our commitment to RichRelevance because the market is proving that this company and its founder have built a recommendations product and delivery platform that are transforming the way online retailers personalize their sites to drive conversion and customer loyalty,” said Emily Melton, a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
To keep pace with the demand for its product from leading online retailers, the Company has doubled its staff in the last six months, including expansion of its IT, engineering, customer service, and sales and marketing teams. In June, the company added Elya Kurktchi as Senior Director, IT and Operations—a renowned expert in building global networks and distributed data architectures for such giants as Akamai and Hotmail; Elya’s expertise will enable RichRelevance to continue to deliver on its commitment to total IT reliability of its SaaS offering. Additionally, the company hired Tyler Hoffman, who formerly ran PayPal’s Enterprise Sales Team, as Vice President of Sales to build and manage a customer-focused team committed to client success.
“We have seen a tremendous response in the marketplace, particularly in advance of the holiday season”, said RichRelevance founder and CEO, David Selinger. “This funding provides us the flexibility to get customers up and running as quickly as possible by funding an expansion of our infrastructure and core talent – while maintaining our commitment to deliver 100% customer satisfaction.”
RichRelevance
is the leading provider of 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 have demonstrated an ability to increase sales for online merchants 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 RichRelevance offering can be deployed and integrated rapidly by large, online retailers, and empowers their internal merchandising teams through a unique, (patent-pending) suite of dashboard controls.