Welcome to the second episode of the Elevator Pitch series 5!
Every week we publish a 30-second pitch from our Elevator Pitch winners.
These startups, chosen by a panel of expert judges for their potential to change the world, join an alumni group that includes the likes of YPlan, Hassle, import.io and Glow, and have to-date raised more than $86m.
In this series we took the founders on a ride unlike any other for the most exciting pitch of their lives.
Tackling the huge, out-of-date data problem
Founders Chris Houghton and Matt Quinn originally set out as a two-man team helping online stores bring the Facebook experience to their ecommerce sites.
But what the pair found when they got there was a big data problem – large online stores with more data than they knew what to do with – which encouraged them to pivot, or in fact expand, their product earlier this year.
Sauce now offers a comprehensive SaaS product for ecommerce stores, the “go-to segmentation” tool for cross-platform, personalised marketing campaigns.
A focus on data quality and usability
Sauce now tracks all of the onsite behaviour of every customer that visits a store, combines that with identity data and then allows stores to segment this into dynamic lists that can be used for targeted Facebook and email marketing, onsite personalisation or A/B testing.
Its drag and drop interface helps retailers do away with Excel spreadsheets and start using their data in a super-easy way, in real-time, to engage with their customers.
This enables them to offer the holy grail in marketing: personalisation, while, importantly, driving significant revenue for its clients.
Bootstrapping for the win
The company was founded a year ago and has been bootstrapped so far by its founders. Houghton’s background is in data and personalisation, formerly working at Qubit, and he has bravely stepped up to take on both the CEO and CTO roles – combining perhaps the perfect skillsets for a tech entrepreneur – while former accountant Matt Quinn has taken on the role of chief strategy officer.
Both say they found themselves spending 12 hours a day staring at screens and impersonal emails for work and couldn’t understand why communications from their favourite stores were just as impersonal and shouty.
The solution is integrated into Shopify’s app store and is already being used by 150 customers.
The Elevator Pitch is gratefully sponsored by KPMG, Knight Frank, Natwest, Taylor Wessing, Propel London and Lendinvest