We couldn’t be more excited to announce our newest investment: Paloma!
Paloma powers commerce on messaging channels, helping brands get >2x higher conversion rates with automated conversational shopping.
When I first met Paloma’s founder & CEO, Kelsey Hunter, I put all my cards on the table: “We’ve struggled with the e-commerce messaging space in the past because it is so crowded and the incumbent platforms have tremendous market leverage. I’m also the farthest person from Paloma’s end user -- I hate social media, and I do not shop. As someone who lives under a rock, I am not sure that I will get this, but I’d love to understand what I’m missing.”
If you’ve ever had the joy of meeting Kelsey, you can probably guess exactly how this meeting went. After roasting me just the right amount for my luddite ways, Kelsey blew me away with her expertise in the e-commerce messaging experience, her perspective of the market landscape and limitations of existing e-commerce infrastructure platforms and messaging tools, and her insights into the still nascent but burgeoning market of messaging-first -- and in some cases, messaging-only -- commerce.
Over the course of our next few meetings, it became abundantly clear that Kelsey, her co-founder/CTO Zach Podbela, and their team are onto something special. With customers like Joybird, ThirdLove and M.Gemi seeing 2-10x increases in conversion rates and a unique product suite, they have set the foundation for a category-defining platform.
Earlier this week, Paloma presented at Facebook’s F8 conference and launched the first version of IG DMs, with Paloma’s Instagram Sales Inbox. With the tailwinds of social commerce, we are thrilled to partner with Paloma as they empower not just leading brands but also the long-tail of indie merchants selling one-of-a-kind products in one-on-one exchanges.
If you run an e-commerce business searching for tooling to build your messaging storefront, sign up for a demo here. On that note, I’m off to try this online shopping thing ...