Aggregate Knowledge Raises $20 Million in Series B Financing

Aggregate Knowledge, the leader in the new category of Online Discovery, recently announced it has closed a Series B financing round of $20 million. Leading the round is DAG Ventures. Also participating in the round is Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the company’s original Series A investor. The latest round brings total investment in the two-year-old company to $25 million.

Aggregate Knowledge’s Collective Discovery Service emulates the way people naturally discover information and shop offline. Discovery moves far beyond traditional keyword search by tapping into the actual, collective behavior of other online users to anticipate and surface the content for which users are actually looking. By employing a super computing architecture, which anonymously aggregates billions of data points in real time, the content delivered instantly adapts to changing consumer behavior. Deployed as a web service, Aggregate Knowledge’s Discovery Services can be up and running on customer sites in two weeks and employs a unique pay-for-performance pricing model.

“Aggregate Knowledge stands out among the new crop of Internet service companies in three important ways: they are leaders in a new game-changing market category, they have name-brand customers, and they have strong and growing revenues,” said Greg Williams, general partner of DAG Ventures. “They have the potential to radically change the way retailers sell products online, how publishers share content, and how users navigate the web. It was an easy decision for DAG to lead this round of investment in Aggregate Knowledge’s rapid expansion.”

Aggregate Knowledge is already powering Discovery for over 50 million unique visitors per month for its growing portfolio of customers. Those customers include major online publishing companies and retailers, such as the WashingtonPost.com and Overstock.com.

The company is now also working with Internet service providers and community sites. “We are seeing click-through rates on our ISP Discovery Window that exceed 10%. At this click-through rate, the Discovery Window is the primary navigation metaphor for the entire portal,” said Chris Law, Aggregate Knowledge’s vice president of product. “Discovery has the potential to be every bit as significant as search,” said Randy Komisar, partner at Kleiner Perkins. “Making unexpected connections among all the different kinds of content a user may care about is the flip side of typing specific words in a box in order to find something you know you are looking for. We’re watching the discovery concept take hold in real time through the success of Aggregate Knowledge’s customers, who are experiencing higher sales, page views, and customer satisfaction. The additional investment we’ve made in the company assures Aggregate Knowledge will continue to lead this rapidly growing market opportunity.”

“Our goal is to bring the delight of serendipitous discovery to the online world,” said Paul Martino, Aggregate Knowledge’s founder and chief executive officer. “Our customers’ experience is proving that this is a powerful concept that has far reaching implications for online businesses and users alike. Our investors are our partners in making this concept a reality.”

The funds will be used to execute Aggregate Knowledge’s wide-ranging strategy to bring serendipitous discovery online. Its product roadmap includes discovery services for online retailers, media sites, networked sites, email marketing, and mobile and other devices. 

Aggregate Knowledge offers the industry’s first online Collective Discovery Services that emulate the way people naturally discover and shop for products and information offline. Built on top of a sophisticated, super computing architecture, Aggregate Knowledge harnesses the behavior of users to fundamentally change the way people navigate and engage online. Aggregate Knowledge delivers significant revenue enhancement to site owners by providing real-time, collective merchandising and navigation capabilities. Funded by premier venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the company’s management team includes veterans from IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Sun, and Tribe.net.

For more information, please visit www.aggregateknowledge.com