Discuss.io is on a roll.
The Seattle startup has reeled in another $880,000 for its consumer market research platform. Unilever Ventures, the venture capital and private equity arm of the multinational consumer goods company, re-upped its investment in the company and led the round, which included participation from other existing investors.
Discuss.io uses video conferencing and crowdsourcing to help brands learn more about their consumers. It’s a digital and tech-focused take on the traditional market research strategy of gathering people in a physical room. Clients can use the platform to get feedback on marketing content within 48 hours of creating them and then quickly iterate new designs based on the responses.
Discuss.io CEO and founder Zach Simmons told GeekWire that business has grown by 1,000 percent since this past October.
“Sector incumbents have barely budged since we released our MVP,” he said. “They may borrow our marketing verbiage but they are failing to replicate our unique value proposition.”
Customers include The Home Depot, AT&T, Target, and many others. Unilever is not only a big investor but also a customer of Discuss.io, using the service to collect consumer research for brands like Degree and Lipton.
“Global research studies that used to take months now take days,” Keith Weed, Univlever chief marketing officer, said in a statement.
Simmons, a former Amazon Web Services product manager, said the fresh cash will be used to hire engineers and double the size of the company’s sales and marketing team. The 4-year-old startup currently employs 29 people. Total funding to date is $2.2 million.
