Court Lorenzini.
Court Lorenzini.

When Court Lorenzini first began raising money for his new startup, the idea was to help make the process of planning, shopping, and cooking dinner easier.

But now the vision is much bigger. Lorenzini, who previously co-founded Docusign, confirmed today with GeekWire that his re-branded company MetaBrite has raised an $8.6 million funding round led by 415 Investments, a Bay Area-based fund led by Principals Owen Van Natta and Grace Stanat.

Lorenzini originally raised nearly $5 million for CookBrite, which was the name of his company that built a one-stop mobile meal-planning solution, acting as a digital shopping list and recipe book.

But this past November, the startup changed its name to MetaBrite, expanding its focus toward a business intelligence platform. CookBrite still exists, but is now just the name of an app that MetaBrite develops.

“We changed the name to expand our corporate strategy beyond our first app (CookBrite), and better position ourselves as a strategic provider of consumer behavioral insights,” Lorenzini explained. “We’re actively leveraging our proprietary data collection technology through both internal use (CookBrite) as well as through embedded relationships with other application providers.”

The CookBrite app can track what you bought at the grocery store.
The CookBrite app can track what you bought at the grocery store.

Part of CookBrite’s secret sauce is the app’s ability to automatically track the ingredients in your pantry and refrigerator by scanning photos of your grocery receipts to log what you buy at the store.

MetaBrite builds upon that technology to collect and analyze consumer habits related to the packaged goods industry.

“We leverage our proprietary technology platforms to collect and analyze the intention, purchase, consumption and restock behavior of millions of discrete households, delivering actionable insights that can dramatically improve consumer acquisition and retention,” the company notes on its website.

The 18-person company also plans to raise an additional $1.6 million in the coming months.

“Business is really starting to take off,” said Lorenzini, who was previously CEO of Primus BioVision, a Seattle-based company he founded in 2008 but has since shut down.

Other MetaBrite executives include co-founder Sam Lucente, formerly HP’s vice president of design; Roy Penn, a former engineer with the Israeli Defense Forces; Christine McKee; a former RealNetworks and Expedia executive; and marketing vet Rion Haber. Other employees have experience at places like Kraft, McDonalds, IBM, and Nielsen.

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