Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the single most important metric for understanding customer behavior. It’s nearly impossible to understand the impact of your marketing efforts and predict profitability without a focus on CLV. Retina is a customer intelligence platform that leverages AI and data analytics to understand CLV before a customer makes a purchase. Supported by better decisioning, high-growth businesses are able to target the right audience, segment, make product decisions, and drive conversions by integrating Retina into their operations. The Santa Monica-based company is trusted by companies like Penrose Hill, Ritual, Dollar Shave Club, and Nestle.
LA TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Emad Hasan to learn more about how Retina is driving customer acquisition, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $10.5M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Retina raised an $8M Series A round, co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Vertical Venture Partners. Additionally, Uday Sandhu, General Partner of AI Capital Partners, AIC’s US-based fund, has joined the company’s board of directors. Previous investors include Comcast Ventures and Crosscut Ventures.
Tell us about your product or service.
Retina is the leading predictive customer lifetime value (pCLV) intelligence company transforming e-commerce customer acquisition for high-growth brands. Retina is the glue that enables brands to make better customer acquisition and service decisions through its AI, machine learning, and data analytics. Its platform is privacy-centric and gives marketers proven insights — without relying on cookies or IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) — that drive improved customer targeting and brand loyalty.
What inspired the start of Retina?
We launched in 2017 to help high-growth brands better connect with their customers. Most companies overpay to acquire customers. By using CLV insights and signals, we knew we could help brands identify and capture their highest value customers to not only boost revenue but improve their customer acquisition dramatically.
How is it different?
We’re faster and more accurate. Retina provides customer lifetime value insights even before a customer’s first transaction and helps brands navigate campaigns in near real-time. Marketers typically need four or more transactions and approximately 18 months of data in order to optimize campaigns. With Retina, we are able to identify high CLV customers even before their first purchase.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
The digital marketing and CLV market is a $500M opportunity. We are targeting the $1.2 trillion that is spent in marketing globally each year.
What’s your business model?
Retina is a SaaS platform based on per-customer scoring with pay-as-you-go, annual, and multi-year options available.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
COVID-19 drove a shift to online e-commerce, and many brands shifted their efforts entirely to online marketing and advertising. However, they were trying to capture as many consumers as possible, and in many cases overspending by using a ‘spray and pray’ model. E-commerce brands turned to Retina and the response we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, we’ve achieved impressive growth over the last year.
What was the funding process like?
It was pretty standard and friendly to founders. Raising funding when things are going well is actually fairly easy. Getting the business to a point where investment is easy and obvious is the hard part.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Startups are all about focus. What makes fundraising difficult is that you have to do it while also running the business – there’s a lot of juggling involved, and you have to make sure you don’t drop any balls.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Uday Sandhu, General Partner of AI Capital Partners is one of our investors and also joined our board as part of this round. He said, “There’s an incredible demand for innovation in both marketing and digital commerce now that third-party cookies are coming off the table. Retina has emerged as the company best equipped to address this demand with its first-party data and privacy-centric platform. They have an enormous opportunity ahead.”
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan on using this funding to drive the company’s growth, continue our hiring spree, and expand the capabilities of its digital platform with existing integrations and partners, including Facebook, Google, Shopify, Segment, and Experian.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Really commit to the idea and then commit to the process — and pace yourself a marathon.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Right now, we sell insights and signals that help our customers make better digital marketing decisions. We give them a GPS of where they are and where they could be going. Where we go next is building an autopilot solution, where our clients set up rules and then our solution makes automatic decisions in real-time to further optimize their digital campaigns.
Right now, we sell insights and signals that help our customers make better digital marketing decisions. We give them a GPS of where they are and where they could be going. Where we go next is building an autopilot solution, where our clients set up rules and then our solution makes automatic decisions in real-time to further optimize their digital campaigns.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Beach volleyball.
