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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 |