Israeli startup Yotpo, which has developed a model for utilizing reviews by users to promote brands and products, has completed a $15 million financing round, led by the Marker LLC fund. Two new investors also joined the company - Innovation Endeavors, led by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, and Vintage Investment Partners - in addition to existing investors Access Industries, owned by Len Blavatnik, Blumberg Capital, Rhodium, and 2b-angels.
The company will use the money to speed up development of its product and enhance its presence in the US market by opening an office in New York and doubling the number of its employees.
CEO Tomer Tagrin and CTO Omri Cohen founded Yotpo in 2011 as a convenient and accessible platform for reviews by surfers that succeeded in promoting genuine reviews and preventing forged ones. The company uses these reviews to enable customers and businesses to promote their products and increase sales on the basis of existing reviews.
"Up until now, programs for providing opinions were unable to monitor users' preferences, which prevented brands from seeing the possibilities of content generated by users," Tagrin says. "The company paid great attention to developing a platform that is suitable for both mobile phone surfers and brands trying to communicate with them. We're proud to see such a large number of investors enthusiastic about standing behind our product and joining us in the company's accelerated growth and development stages, while we are helping our customers realize the power of marketing surfers' content.
"The nature of the relationship between a brand and a customer is becoming more mobile and social, and this makes it difficult for companies to market themselves well," says Marker LLC cofounding partner Yuval Shachar. "Thanks to Yotpo, online businesses can overcome the noise and contribute their users' content to the creation of trust and to obtain new customers. We're excited about joining Yotpo's team while they are still reinventing the surfers' content marketing industry."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 23, 2015
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