We are pleased to announce our participation in Inveterate’s Seed round alongside Vertical Venture Partners, Alpaca VC and Aglaé Ventures.
What is Inveterate, and why is it so important right now?
Inveterate solves the increasingly declining CAC:LTV ratio in e-commerce by enabling Shopify merchants to extract more value from their best customers via memberships. Through their platform, brands such as Lashify, Fresh Clean Threads and CozyEarth have the ability to offer their customers special incentives through paid, free and/or spend-based memberships. And the program works: data shows that customers who are part of an Inveterate-facilitated membership program spend, on average, 3x more than customers who are not members.
Of course, membership programs are nothing new. We’ve all seen the blockbuster success of Amazon’s and Costco’s membership programs. In fact, many merchants take a hit on their margins to sell through Amazon because of their loyal consumer base. With Inveterate, brands are able to reclaim their customers through competitive incentives such as free shipping, cash back and a discounted price catalog. In most cases, membership programs via Inveterate provide far more consumer perks than those of existing big box programs. This allows mid-market to enterprise Shopify brands to increase their edge in a consumer market that continues to grow more and more competitive.
Why this team?
Dylan Whitman, the company’s founder and CEO, is phenomenal. In making this investment, we have the utmost conviction in his ability to navigate and execute within an otherwise cutthroat category. Dylan previously built and sold BV Accel, one of the leading agencies in the Shopify Plus ecosystem. He served some of Shopify’s biggest customers, including MVMT Watches, RedBull and Chubbies. Through this experience he realized that there was a major gap in customer loyalty offerings for his clients. Sure, they could offer recurring transactions via subscriptions or rewards for actions such as signing up for newsletters or social follows. But, there was a greenspace when it came to turning one-time customers into intentional and engaged brand advocates. This is why he decided to embark on the entrepreneurial journey once again and build Inveterate.
What’s Bonfire’s thesis?
Dylan’s exceptional founder-market fit coupled with commerce brands’ focus on increased loyalty made the opportunity immediately compelling when it was brought to us by Aubrie at Alpaca VC (shoutout to her for sharing with us!). Our diligence process only reinforced our initial interest. Inveterate’s customers love the platform because it delivers a better experience for their best consumers and pays for itself tenfold in measurable revenue. In fact, Dylan even hired his champion at Lashify, (one of their biggest customers), as Head of CS at the beginning of this year.
We believe that memberships in e-commerce will soon be table stakes, and Inveterate will be at the forefront of this adoption. We feel lucky to share the cap table with other phenomenal commerce investors - Brad at VVC, Aubrie at Alpaca and Brendan at Aglae. And, we feel most lucky to be a partner to Dylan and his amazing team.
