Needle Gets $10.5 Million in Series B Funding

Jul 11, 2012 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- Needle Inc. said that it has closed a $10.5 million series B funding round, co-led by Shasta Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners.

In a release, the Company said that this most recent round of funding will be used to accelerate the adoption of the company's social selling platform and expand its pool of brand experts and fans for its ecommerce clients.

Needle provides ecommerce companies the ability to link certified product experts and fans of the brand with customers shopping the site to provide guided shopping assistance via chat, video or voice. Needle said that the experts and fans that the Company identifies and certifies use Needle's Guided Shopping platform, a complete web-based communications platform that was architected from the ground up to provide ecommerce shoppers with an in-store shopping experience online. "Needlers," as they are called, can access the platform anywhere they have an Internet connection, and customers connect with these fans and experts by clicking a banner or invitation on the ecommerce partner's site.

Needle said that its existing clients that utilize this model see improvements to site performance, in many cases the Company noted they are doubling their ROI through increased sales conversion rates, better customer retention and improved Net Promoter Scores (NPS), a measurement of customer loyalty. Needle's clients each have NPS scores higher than 72 percent, compared to an industry average of 47 percent.

"Companies that continue to use antiquated text-based chat to provide customer experience are going to fall far behind in the ecommerce world," said Morgan Lynch, founder and CEO of Needle. "Today's buyer expects authenticity and expertise, and passing them off to a person in a contact center who has no genuine experience with the company's products and is using canned answers is the antithesis of that. Shasta and Rembrandt recognize the disruptive role Needle is playing in the ecommerce world and we're looking forward to working with them as we fix real-time shopping interactions online and disrupt the $100 billion global contact center space." Jim Barnett, a partner at Shasta Ventures, and Douglas Schrier, a partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners, will both join Needle's Board.

Prior to joining Shasta, Barnett was the chairman, CEO and co-founder of Turn, a platform for managing data driven digital advertising. Before that he was president of Overture Search, a division of Overture Services, Inc. Barnett joined Overture via its acquisition of AltaVista Company, where he was president and CEO. In this role, he led the company's successful turnaround and sale to Overture.

Schrier is an investment and private equity veteran with over 20 years of experience funding, managing and developing technology companies. He has invested approximately $140 million into 22 startups over the past 15 years with 14 realizations that have produced over a 5X return, and was the Co-Founder, COO & CFO of Multum Information Services and President of Ceon Corp.

"The platform Needle has architected over the last two years has the potential to change the ecommerce landscape," said Jim Barnett, Partner at Shasta Ventures. "Ecommerce companies have been focused on social commerce without a lot of measurable results. Needle's platform takes fans and experts from places like Facebook and literally puts them to work by inserting them into the sales process." Prior to this round, Needle reported that it raised a series A round of $2 million. This marks the second time Shasta Ventures has invested in a company founded by Lynch, having previously backed his startup company Logoworks, which was acquired by HP in 2007.

Needle created a new model of social commerce that provides ecommerce websites with real-time shopping assistance.

Rembrandt Venture Partners (RVP) is a technology venture capital firm focused solely on helping entrepreneurs build great companies.

Shasta Ventures is an early-stage investment firm focused on companies in the consumer-Internet, mobile and software sectors.

More Information: www.shastaventures.com www.needle.com www.rembrandtvc.com ((Comments on this story may be sent to health@closeupmedia.com))

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