Reevoo is a trust filter for the web
Reevoo today announces a $5mn Series A fundraising* from Eden Ventures and a raft of experience angels. There have been a few questions about what is this investment is all about.
Let me give a view.
A massive problem with the web is knowing who and what to
trust. Not only because of the growth of
dodgy review sites and spoof blogs / affiliates but also because “kosher”
ecommerce sites themselves want to increase the levels of trust consumers place
in them. They have worked out that higher online trust = higher online conversion.
Reevoo is solving this problem with a two pronged attack;
1) The ReevooMark
product is a service to collect reviews from retailer’s customers who have
already bought goods. ReevooMark aggregates these reviews around products
and serves these reviews back to the retailers sites. (see Dixons , Currys , Jessops
etc ).
2)Reevoo.com,
which is still very much in Beta, also provides a destination for consumers to
read these reviews to help choose what to buy. Price comparison engines were the first generation in helping consumer
WHERE to buy.
Reevoo provides a trust filter to help consumers work out WHAT to buy.
The other exciting thing is that if Reevoo can dominate the part of the purchase process that focuses on WHAT to buy
rather than where to buy it will become an enormously powerful platform for
shaping purchase decisions. Ben Tompkins is the General Partner at Eden Ventures who I negotiated the
Reevoo investment with. In his previously life at Broadview Ben was
the guy who sold Kelkoo to Yahoo for €475 million. Ben understands what the value an
investment in a second generation site like Reevoo could yield.
*First Capital advised Reevoo on this fundraising.
