San Francisco – October 19, 2017 – Constructor.io, the on-site search company, today announced a $5 million Series A funding round led by Zetta Venture Partners, the first venture capital firm focused on artificial intelligence, and including a significant investment from Signia Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in disruptive early stage companies. Constructor.io emerges from stealth development to revolutionize on-site search experiences by providing the world’s most advanced autosuggest that ensures visitors find what they need and brands convert traffic into revenue. Constructor.io already works with some of the largest online retailers such as Jet.com, as well as SaaS innovators like Expensify and healthcare pioneers like Eligible.
Constructor.io’s flagship offering uses machine learning to learn from website users to make better on-site search suggestions, overcome spelling errors, update result rankings and master synonyms. Constructor.io’s plug-and-play autosuggest makes search personalized, driving more revenue from search and a better customer experience.
“Making the shopping experience transparent, efficient and fun is at the core of Jet.com’s mission. Our engineering team delivers on this mission with the help of Constructor.io, which powers personalized on-site search,” says John Turek, SVP of Engineering, Jet.com. “Constructor.io’s solution has proved critical in helping us identify everything from spelling corrections to foreign language recognition, enabling us to be more effective and efficient in our operations and positively contributing to our bottom line.”
“Everyone who has used the Internet has experienced poor on-site search results. Constructor.io helps guide people so that they find what they want quickly, regardless of typos, synonyms, and phrasing,” says Eli Finkelshteyn, co-founder and CEO, Constructor.io. “Website visitors should never struggle to find what they are looking for on any site, ever. Engineering, user experience and commerce teams should not have to reinvent the search wheel over and over again when there are other business challenges to address.”
Optimizing on-site search traffic holds untapped upside for brands. According to analysis by Econsultancy, ecommerce visitors using search convert 1.8 times more often than other customers. And yet, their research also showed room for search improvement: 20% of people who use search go on to refine their searches (submit another search) and 21% exit a website after the search results.
“Constructor.io is a Google in a world of AltaVistas. None of the incumbent products use data to make search better over time. Eli and Dan are leading a team that can bring on-site search into the intelligence era, leveraging their experience solving similar problems at Shutterstock for the largest retailers and online companies in the world,” says Ash Fontana, Managing Director, Zetta Venture Partners. “They have applied natural language processing to automatically extract the highest-converting searches, solving a huge issue for online businesses, while helping consumers save time.”
With only 15% of companies dedicating resources to optimizing the on-site search experience, the impact of machine-learning based search will be massive for both customer experience and driving revenue. Constructor.io has also helped companies with dedicated search teams in-place increase conversion up to 21%. And search is not limited to ecommerce, Constructor.io has worked with customers on healthcare search, voice search and search for other SaaS products.
“Constructor.io’s self-learning search engine is an architecture that will bring advanced autocomplete functionality to any site with a search bar,” says Ed Cluss, Founding Partner, Signia Venture Partners, “and the market is giant, with over $95B at stake in e-commerce alone.”
About Constructor.io
Constructor.io is the personalized on-site search company that applies machine learning algorithms to revolutionize on-site search experiences, ensuring visitors find what they need and brands convert traffic into revenue. The company was founded in 2015 by engineers with decades of experience in high-growth, high-traffic sites with the mission to deliver capabilities that were traditionally only been available to websites with large development teams. Constructor.io is headquartered in San Francisco.
About Zetta Venture Partners
Zetta Venture Partners is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, and was the first fund focused on artificial intelligence. Zetta invests in AI for business, partnering with companies building software that learns from data to analyze, predict and prescribe outcomes. Previous investments include Domo, InsideSales.com, Clearbit, Domino Data Lab and Kaggle.
About Signia Venture Partners
Signia Venture Partners is an early-stage venture fund dedicated to helping passionate entrepreneurs realize their vision and build impactful, high-growth ventures. Signia’s team is made up of proven entrepreneurs with a track record of success and experience at every stage of growth and with a hands-on approach to technology investing.
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