• Latest funding round all about the timing 

• Funds to be used to double Alloy’s team and marketing efforts 

• Predicts continued need for data tooling as online transactions grow 

San Francisco-based  Alloy Automation  (Alloy) offers a no-code platform for ecommerce businesses to create automated workflows. Founded in 2019, the company develops tooling that enables multiple functions (marketing, operations, support, etc.) to connect data and actions across the apps merchants use to run their stores.

On the back of an impressive 2021, the relatively young Alloy announced this week that it raised USD 20 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Coming into the round, the company had already raised more than USD 7 million. 

Alloy Co-founder and CEO Sara Du, speaking to SPEEDA Edge, said that the round was not prompted by a need for cash. 

Though Alloy didn’t have a specific funding target in mind, Du said that with the company’s performance and growing investor interest, the stars seemed to align for seeking further investment.

With a global team of engineers in countries including India and the Philippines, Alloy has earmarked the funds for growing the team to 40, as well as for future marketing efforts. 

Discussing Alloy’s plans for the next few years, Du revealed that the company was focused on developing more ecommerce functionality and building out a full-stack tool. 

Underscoring the industry’s current hot streak, Alloy has now raised a total of USD 27 million, having only emerged from stealth in 2021, with the company stating that though there are no concrete plans for when, more funding will follow. However, things haven’t always been as promising as they are now. 

Du lifted the lid on some of the challenges industry players, including Alloy, face when trying to secure investment, highlighting how crucial it is for prospective investors to have the necessary market background and education.

Meanwhile, with some of the industry’s big players like  Shopify  growing in scale and recording strong revenue growth over the last couple of years, the investment landscape within the industry has changed dramatically. Du revealed that though companies historically faced difficulties in pre-seed and seed rounds, the tide seems to be turning; companies like  Attentive ,  ReCharge , and  Gorgias  have raised funds successfully, with a couple of unicorns being minted. 

The industry has also been one of the few to have bloomed under the economic conditions brought about by Covid-19. Questions remain on whether this is sustainable, as some companies predict that growth rates would decelerate, but Du believes that this cautious outlook is mostly relevant to ecommerce platforms that are, in some respects, expectation setting. 

“We (Alloy) are doing different things. Our bet is that merchants will need to become more sophisticated to do more commerce online. We’re not betting that there’ll be more merchants going online; it’s more so that there’s going to be more people buying online and things are going to get more complex and you’ll need data tooling.” 

Alloy is fully commercialized and its tools are designed for customers of all sizes, though a significant portion of its sales comes from larger enterprises. According to the company, its total customer count has now reached the thousands and includes brands from Japan, Canada, Australia, and the UK. 

Du also recently sat down with  Sacra  to discuss Alloy’s initial goals, its approach and current stack, along with its hopes to optimize the many possibilities within ecommerce. Read the full interview  here .