Gener8tor is a nationally ranked accelerator that invests in high-growth startups. Gener8tor supports the growth of these startups through its network of experienced mentors, technologists, corporate partners, angel investors, and venture capitalists. Gener8tor invests in high-growth startups, including software, IT, web, SaaS, life science, MedTech, e-commerce, and hardware. Accepted startups receive $100,000 and 12 weeks of mentorship-driven programming. Gener8tor is a member of the Global Accelerator Network (GAN).

gener8tor

Right Side Capital Management is a venture capital firm that helps startups build their company. It invests exclusively in the pre-seed round of technology startups and makes 75-100 investment per year. The firms prefers to invest in diversified technology sectors such as the internet and cloud companies. RSCM was established in 2010 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Right Side Capital Management

CSA Partners, LLC is a venture fund that invests in early-stage, high-growth companies. They partner with entrepreneurs to help them build and grow great innovative companies. They invest in startups that have a well-defined vision and bring elegant solutions to clearly articulated problems. They utilize a lean, tenacious and responsible management style that is data-driven and outcome-focused.

CSA Partners LLC

M25 is a Chicago-based Midwest-focused venture capital firm run by Victor Gutwein and Mike Asem. Since the firm's inception in 2015, M25 has invested in 90+ early-stage tech startups in over 24 cities across 11 states in the Midwest. M25's objective, analytical model and collaborative, forward-thinking approach creates a large portfolio spanning several industries across the entire region, allowing them to establish M25 as a key node in Midwest startup ecosystem.

Stage 2 Capital is a go-to-market venture capital fund that primarily invests in early-stage B2B software companies. Backed by top go-to-market professionals from leading tech companies, Stage 2 Capital leverages its deep sales expertise to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses in addition to providing capital.

Stage 2 Capital

Dundee Venture Capital invests $500,000-$1M in high-growth, early-stage technology companies. Most of Dundee VC's investments are related to e-commerce, e-commerce infrastructure, supply chain, logistics, and fintech.  Dundee VC formally began in 2010. The root of the idea started much earlier when Mark Hasebroock, Dundee VC’s founding, and managing partner, was raising money for his two e-commerce companies, giftcertificates.com and Hayneedle.com, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, respectively.

Dundee Venture Capital

Heartland Ventures is a Midwest-based venture capital firm connecting large Middle America companies with vital technology being developed on the coasts. Our proven model helps corporations embrace a competitive, early-adopter approach, while helping startups spark meaningful conversations with key corporate decision makers. Since 2016, we’ve invested in seven portfolio companies, facilitated over 114 startup connections for Heartland corporations and created over $65 Million in pipeline revenue for our portfolio companies.  Seed to Series A Rounds smaller than $10mm Check size: $500k-$3mm

Heartland Ventures

Technology Venture Capital in Northern Plains

Homegrown Capital

Pear Commerce

Pear simplifies retail marketing by connecting CPG advertisements directly with retailers. Pear brings your digital marketing to life by adding a call to action. Consumers can purchase a product or claim an offer right from the ad, and Pear takes care of creating the connection to a local retailer who can fulfill the transaction. Pear collects your consumer’s information, so you’ll know your customers and their purchasing behavior better, while driving more sales for your products.

Pear Commerce is a retail ecommerce platform that connects consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands with thousands of retailers across the US and Canada. As of February 2024, the company partners with more than 3,000 retailers at nearly 165,000 locations, including four of the industry's top retailers. Pear Commerce's technology converts shoppable tools into actionable insights that fuel performance marketing for CPG brands, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups.

Yahoo and Pear Commerce Simplify E‑commerce Experiences for Shoppers and Optimize Conversions for Brands

Yahoo’s New Partnership will Enable Shoppable Retail Ads

Empowering the digital revolution in retail

Digital Retail Enhancement Platforms

Pear Commerce: Retail Enablement Company Raises $10 Million In Series A

Pear Commerce is a retail ecommerce platform that connects consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands with thousands of retailers across the US and Canada. As of February 2024, the company partners with more than 3,000 retailers at nearly 165,000 locations, including four of the industry's top retailers. Pear Commerce's technology converts shoppable tools into actionable insights that fuel performance marketing for CPG brands, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups.
In February 2024, Pear Commerce launched Pear Connect, a shoppable tool that reduces the path to purchase down to a single click, streamlining conversions for shoppers, marketers, and retailers. Pear Connect enables instant shoppability by allowing consumers to add products directly to a retailer's ecommerce cart from a digital advertisement.
Pear Commerce's technology enables marketers to granularly customize which products and retailers to display in their advertisements while leveraging machine learning capabilities to optimize audience targeting. The company's platform provides marketers with access to valuable insights into the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Key customers and partnerships
Pear Commerce has formed a partnership with Yahoo Advertising in February 2024 to enable unmatched, seamless shoppability online. Through this partnership, Yahoo Advertising can leverage Pear Commerce's performance-driven technology to facilitate premium inventory buying and ad targeting on its industry-leading demand-side platform (DSP).
The collaboration between Pear Commerce and Yahoo Advertising aims to maximize the online shopping experience for consumers, brands, and retailers, providing a more efficient, engaging, and effective shopping journey. By combining Yahoo Advertising's media-buying platform and access to premium inventory with Pear's convenience and performance-driven technology, the partnership expands Yahoo's Retail and CPG offering, which also includes support of Media Networks like the Lowe's One Roof Media Network.

Intelligence Node is a leading provider of retail analytics solutions that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. The company offers dynamic pricing and market analytics tools to help businesses navigate the complexities of ecommerce, set competitive prices, and better understand market trends.
At the core of Intelligence Node's offerings is a massive database containing over 3.5 billion unique product SKUs across 1,400 categories and 29 languages. This extensive dataset, combined with proprietary algorithms and advanced matching capabilities, enables the company to provide highly accurate real-time insights into pricing, product availability, and market trends.
Intelligence Node's solutions are designed to address key challenges faced by retailers, such as the inability to effectively track competitors, difficulties in pricing products optimally, and identifying gaps in product catalogs. The company's tools collect and analyze real-time data on pricing, discounts, and catalog movements across the retail landscape, allowing decision-makers to benchmark against competitors and make informed pricing decisions.
In addition to pricing analytics, Intelligence Node also offers solutions for content optimization and product listing enhancement. By leveraging generative AI capabilities, the company helps retailers create compelling and search-optimized product descriptions, improving visibility and conversion rates across online channels.
Intelligence Node has formed strategic partnerships with major retailers to enhance the online shopping experience and empower third-party sellers. The company's solutions enable retailers to provide clearer and more informative product listings, better insights into product performance, and improved search rankings across digital marketplaces.

Intelligence Node

Obsess is an experiential ecommerce platform that leverages augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology to create immersive, shoppable 3D virtual retail environments for brands and retailers. The platform allows companies to construct photorealistic digital spaces where customers can explore products in a visually engaging and interactive manner. Obsess' virtual stores aim to drive product discovery, customer engagement, clickthrough rates, session duration, average order value, and conversion for its clients.
Obsess' proprietary technology enables brands to offer seamless and memorable branded virtual experiences without requiring customers to download an app or use a headset. The platform supports various features such as walking and talking avatars, gamification elements, educational content, and social media integrations to enhance the shopping experience. As of February 2023, Obsess had created virtual stores in over 45 countries, supporting more than 30 languages.
The company has partnered with renowned brands across industries, including Sam's Club, Charlotte Tilbury, Diesel, Dior, Party City, Tommy Hilfiger, J.Crew, and Elizabeth Arden, to launch immersive virtual shopping experiences. In June 2023, J.Crew unveiled the "Virtual Beach House," a 360-degree virtual store celebrating the brand's 40th anniversary, featuring themed rooms, product displays, historical catalogs, and interactive games. Similarly, Elizabeth Arden launched a shoppable virtual store in May 2023 to engage younger, tech-savvy consumers and showcase its heritage through digital storytelling.
Key customers and partnerships
In February 2024, Mytheresa, an ecommerce platform, collaborated with Obsess to launch an exclusive visionOS app for Apple's Vision Pro headset. The app offers users a hyper-realistic digital luxury shopping experience in virtual environments like Capri and Paris, featuring curated collections from brands such as Loewe, Valentino, and Saint Laurent. The partnership aims to transform traditional ecommerce into an emotional and engaging shopping journey.

Obsess

Namogoo is a pioneer in the Digital Journey Continuity platform space. The company offers a platform that autonomously adapts to each customer visit in real-time, shaping the customer journey to fit each shopper's needs while eliminating any distractions along the way. Namogoo's proprietary machine learning technology predicts each visitor's intent by learning from their unique digital behavior signals, empowering enterprises to act on this intent and ensure online shoppers complete their journeys.
The platform collects data from visitors' devices and their journeys, segmenting them into real-time audiences. It surfaces high-converting audiences that are 3-10 times more likely to purchase than average visitors. Additionally, Namogoo identifies user populations that do not convert due to UX conflicts, browser issues, or site design flaws, enabling brands to rectify these problems seamlessly.
In April 2022, Namogoo launched the "Customer Journey OS," a revolutionary software platform that enables ecommerce teams to deliver hyper-personalized journeys based on shoppers' real-time needs. It orchestrates all digital services running on the customer journey to work cohesively toward shared goals. The platform leverages Namogoo's vast network of over one billion unique visitors to provide real-time insights based on industry benchmarks.
Namogoo's solutions have been successfully implemented by leading brands such as Victoria's Secret, Neiman Marcus, ASICS, Marks & Spencer, Kurt Geiger, Carhartt, Eddie Bauer, GlassesUS.com, and Ariat, consistently driving uplifts in conversion rates, revenue per visitor (RPV), and overall revenue. The company was founded in 2014 and has raised USD 81 million to date.
In January 2023, Namogoo made a second round of layoffs, parting ways with 15% of its workforce, following an earlier round in November 2022 where 25% of employees were let go. Despite these cutbacks, the company reported continued growth and profitability.

Namogoo

Yalo is a software platform that utilizes AI-powered conversational agents to optimize the customer journey, driving increased conversions and customer satisfaction. Its technology facilitates direct communication between businesses and customers through popular messaging applications like WhatsApp. Yalo's platform empowers teams to collaborate on managing and tracking campaigns, automating workflows with insightful metrics.
Primarily catering to marketers, small, and medium enterprises, Yalo's conversational commerce approach seamlessly guides customers through the purchasing process while maximizing product potential. By combining customer service and sales support, the platform offers a unique and engaging experience for users.
As of November 2023, Yalo reported having 1.6 million companies utilizing its platform to manage customer interactions via messaging channels. The company's innovative solutions have garnered a diverse clientele, including industry giants like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mondelez, Coppel, Banco Azteca, and GPA.
In May 2021, Yalo secured a USD 50 million Series C funding round led by B Capital Group, bringing its total raised capital to USD 75 million since its inception in 2015. The funds were allocated to expand operations in Latin America and Southeast Asia while developing new products, such as a conversational marketing solution.
Key customers and partnerships
Yalo has established partnerships with major global brands across various industries. Notable customers included Unilever, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Walmart. Specifically, John Santa Maria, CEO of Coca-Cola FEMSA, acknowledged the significant sales uplift achieved through their conversational commerce partnership with Yalo, with nearly half a million corner stores placing orders via WhatsApp.

Yalo

NewStore is a modular, mobile-first omnichannel cloud platform that provides an Omnichannel-as-a-Service solution for retail brands worldwide. The platform enables retailers to deliver seamless shopping experiences across online, mobile, and in-store channels, leveraging modern technologies such as iOS devices for point-of-sale, inventory management, and order fulfillment.NewStore's platform comprises several modules, including POS, order management, clienteling, inventory, and native consumer apps. The order management and store fulfillment solutions utilize proprietary routing logic to allocate orders across a brand's brick-and-mortar locations and distribution centers based on predefined criteria, optimizing shipping times, inventory accuracy, and sell-through rates.The platform facilitates omnichannel capabilities like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), buy online, return in-store (BORIS), and endless aisle, enhancing the customer experience while driving store traffic. NewStore's solutions seamlessly integrate with existing tech stacks, such as Salesforce systems and middleware platforms like MuleSoft and Azure.Prominent retail brands like Burton, Faherty Brand, G-Star RAW, Marine Layer, Roots Canada, Scotch &amp; Soda, UNTUCKit, and Vince have adopted NewStore's platform, benefiting from its comprehensive omnichannel retail solution. In March 2023, NewStore expanded its offerings to a global scale, assessing the omnichannel competence of 275 retail brands across Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK

NewStore

Solutions for retailers that offer insights to improve the product assortment they offer on their digital shelves, increase sales, improve conversions, and boost brand trust

Platforms for retailers and brands to build immersive ecommerce shopping experiences commonly leveraging AR, AI, digital twin, and 3D technologies

Solutions for retailers to enhance online shopping experiences, personalization, and conversion rates while delivering analytics on individual customer journeys to improve shopper engagement

Offers insights to retailers and brands by aggregating and analyzing data across multiple sales channels to boost sales

Solutions providing analytics for brands and retailers to improve competitive position, such as competitor pricing and assortment insights, high-level customer insights to reduce churn, and optimize web traffic

Platforms that provide retailers and brands with greater visibility on overall ecommerce operations to enhance decision-making—commonly through dashboards—including sales forecasting

Virtual stores may leverage digital twins to deliver immersive shopping experiences

Retail enhancement solutions can be offered in a B2B SaaS model

Retail enhancement solutions leverage AI to deliver better insights to businesses, to enable decision making

Improves the personalized offerings for retail customers

Virtual store solutions leverage 3D and AR to create an immersive digital shopping experience

Pear Commerce

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