In a crowded digital realm, e-commerce companies are constantly updating the customer experience to respond to emerging touchpoints and to engage consumers in novel ways. Headless commerce is gaining in popularity, designed with a flexible architecture that decouples the front end of a site from the back-end commerce functionality. By decoupling, companies can rapidly iterate and test without disrupting the core commerce functionality, resulting in reduced development time while enriching the customer experience Nacelle is an e-commerce infrastructure platform that allows merchants and brands to move to headless architectures in order to innovate and iterate quickly while reducing dependency on third-party solutions. The company’s core technology, the unified GraphQL API layer, integrates with various commerce platforms and content management systems including Shopify Plus with minimal effort. Merchants on the platform have the flexibility to build true headless solutions with benefits like reduced page speeds and increased conversions while maintaining a single codebase that’s optimized for all devices. The company, founded in 2019, powers the e-commerce presence of brands like LOLA, FTD, Flex, Boll & Branch, Thinx, and ILIA Beauty.
LA TechWatch caught up with Nacelle CEO and Founder Brian Anderson to learn more about the state of headless commerce, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $72.8M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Series B, Tiger Global, $50M.
Tell us about your product or service.
Nacelle is a headless commerce platform for composing best-of-breed solutions. Nacelle empowers commerce business and technology leaders to compose headless solutions quickly with low risk, by providing a single unified GraphQL API layer that accelerates both access to backend systems and shopping experiences. By providing performant, out-of-the-box integrations with popular commerce platforms, storefronts, CMS, PIMs, and more, frontend developers can focus on creating experiences that differentiate their brand in today’s experience economy. Brands begin their journey to composable commerce by using their existing tech stack while abstracting the complexity of the API layer. Built for scale, Nacelle is a purpose-built event-driven system that enables connected systems to receive real-time updates to changes in state from all upstream services.
What inspired the start of Nacelle?
I had another startup, ShopElf, a highly technical Shopify Plus agency specializing in custom Shopify storefronts where my team and I created headless progressive web application (PWA) builds before “headless commerce” was a widespread industry buzzword. While we didn’t set out to overcome the uncharted obstacles of custom headless builds for clients, it was the outcome of our efforts and the groundwork for our 2019 venture, Nacelle.
How is it different?
Headless Commerce is a very popular buzzword these days and it’s important to understand the true definition of the term: a decoupling of shopping experiences (i.e. storefront) and the backend systems of eCommerce. Nacelle enables merchants to use their existing backend systems such as Shopify Plus and build performant and customizable frontends, improve developer productivity and accelerate innovation cycles.
Many platforms that claim to be “headless” require merchants to use their backend system(s) to get business results, foregoing many of the benefits of a headless architecture. The interdependence between frontend and backend systems limits the merchants’ ability to adopt true best-of-breed solutions. Also, forcing these backend systems on merchants requires risky and lengthy data migrations from the merchant’s existing systems.
Nacelle enables merchants to use the commerce tech stack of their choosing. Nacelle instead provides out-of-the-box integrations to merchant’s existing systems and their systems in the future without the risk of migrations, while acting as an orchestration layer.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Over the past two years, Nacelle has become the de facto standard for Shopify Plus merchants going headless that want to continue to take advantage of Shopify’s functionality and ecosystem. Dozens of leading direct-to-consumer brands on Shopify Plus have chosen Nacelle to go headless and accelerate time to value.
This new round of funding will accelerate Nacelle’s expansion and represents a significant step on the journey to composable commerce. Nacelle is poised to meet the demand it’s getting from customers on a wide variety of platforms and to continue to set the bar for the composable future.
What’s your business model?
SaaS.
How has the business been impacted by COVID-19?
Nacelle has secured three rounds of funding (Seed-Series B; during Covid 19 (2020-2021). With the need to stay home due to the pandemic, eCommerce has grown more than ever, requiring brands to compete in a heavily saturated market. In order to stand out, they need to have shopping experiences that work seamlessly across all devices while accelerating their pace of development and innovation. The Headless architecture is the model of choice for innovative brands and retailers, and Nacelle accelerates headless adoption and performance.
Simply put, Nacelle has been extremely successful during this time.
What was the funding process like?
Tiger Global is an amazing partner. Like Nacelle, they move fast and are massively disruptive. Their process is very innovative and relies on speedy diligence and quick decision-making. We were able to complete the round in weeks.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The biggest challenge while raising capital always is splitting focus. It’s difficult for small teams to have so much going on. It was important to maintain clear communication with the team and stay on critical projects while also focusing on the process with Tiger.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
While Tiger Global is unlike traditional VCs in many ways, they still look for the key attributes of any VC investment: team, traction and total market. Nacelle is bringing in amazing talent and leadership connected with the lead investor right away. We are growing at an amazing rate exceeding expectations that are driven by the Covid e-commerce surge. We’ve established a defacto leadership position in Shopify Plus. Finally, the e-Commerce market is undergoing a foundational transformation to modernize tech stacks to best-of-breed solutions. Nacelle is a solution that fits squarely into that market trend.
While Tiger Global is unlike traditional VCs in many ways, they still look for the key attributes of any VC investment: team, traction and total market. Nacelle is bringing in amazing talent and leadership connected with the lead investor right away. We are growing at an amazing rate exceeding expectations that are driven by the Covid e-commerce surge. We’ve established a defacto leadership position in Shopify Plus. Finally, the e-Commerce market is undergoing a foundational transformation to modernize tech stacks to best-of-breed solutions. Nacelle is a solution that fits squarely into that market trend.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We are looking at doubling our customers and surpassing 100 employees (from over 60 today). We’ll have at least 5 more case studies showing how customers continue with successful rollouts that boost the performance of their shopping experiences, make their developers more productive, and accelerate their innovation.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
There is a great, thriving group of VCs in LA! I’ve had wonderful conversations with world-class firms like Upfront, Fika, M13, and Mucker. I think it is a wonderful place to start your capital raising efforts.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
The infusion of capital will accelerate our ability to build out more offerings within our platform, connect with more partners and customers, and continue to build out a world-class, fully remote team. We’ll continue to make it faster for brands and retailers to move to adopt headless commerce as they move to the composable commerce future.
What is your favorite restaurant in LA?
SUGARFISH. No questions asked.
