Welcoming Redpoint to the Button family


After only eight months of operation, I’m thrilled to announce that Button has raised a $12 Million Series A led by Redpoint Ventures. This is based on our team, our partners, our technology, and our vision.

In a short period, we have become a leader in deep linking technology offering mobile customer acquisition, engagement and monetization. Our progress has helped us attract some of the best companies in the world into our network. In October, we launched our DeepLink Commerce platform in partnership with Uber, the world’s fastest growing company, and we were honored that they showcased our technology during their keynote speech at the Concur DevCon. We now have a number of additional brands readying to launch after observing the style, success and simplicity of our initial implementations.

We live in an app world - and when we started Button, our dream was to redefine how apps connected in the mobile economy. Our goal was to extend app experiences across the mobile ecosystem - to solve the problem that we, as users, so often felt: “I want something - but I need to navigate through a collection of screens, an app store, a registration - and hopefully I remember what I wanted when the journey began”. Our rallying cry is to break down the walls and reduce the friction of this disconnected app world.

We’re confident that the mobile economy is going to be the single largest opportunity and commercial trend we will have witnessed since the advent of the internet.

Commerce is big on the web, of course, but never before have we had the alignment of so many factors that will enable mobile to be bigger…more devices, more connectivity, daily spend going digital, and a trusted and sophisticated payments infrastructure.

At Button, we assembled a team with the highest caliber talent from the mobile, payments, and commerce industries. They are leaders in each of their respective areas of focus from engineering and product design, to partnerships, finance, and operations.

Matching a team of this caliber with an opportunity this large creates big ambitions - and I’m proud to say, we’ve been executing. Since raising our Seed round, we have surpassed the goals and milestones we set in those initial discussions with investors.

In mobile, intent or demand often manifests itself in one application - but must be fulfilled or satisfied in another. For example, I make a reservation, and now I need to “get there”.

Before Button existed, this intent would often just be lost, but now, with the Button platform - consumer intent can intelligently be matched to the relevant good or service. We infer intent based on activity, historical data, context, time, and location and from there we connect users to the relevant service they’re seeking in a seamless and seemingly “native” flow. The beauty is that by connecting consumers with what they want (at the touch of a button), we enrich app experiences while unlocking new channels of monetization.

Brands and Developers no longer need to rely on mobile ad placements that “detract” from their app experience - they can monetize through Button’s commerce network - while enhancing their app experience and driving higher engagement with their users. Whether the connections are driven out of “true utility” like “needing a ride” in the example above, or if they’re driven by new user, re-engagement, or loyalty currency offers, Button’s platform enables deep, productized connections that couldn’t exist previously.

The partnerships we’ve signed, our execution, and the caliber of the team we’ve assembled has brought us this far. Our second chapter starts now.

Participating investors in this round included Greycroft, DCM, Atlas, and VaynerRSE - and new investors include industry experts Slow Ventures and NBA Commissioner Emeritus David Stern.

Redpoint’s Chris Moore will be joining our board - and we’re delighted not only by his industry expertise - but by how well he fits into the Button family. Our culture and our people drove our decision on who to work with in this round - and we’re thrilled to have Chris and the Redpoint team on board.

Button’s 2015 will be focused on scaling - about continuing to hold ourselves to the same standards of excellence in hiring. Being an engineering-driven company, our culture has attracted some of the best engineers in the world. It is centered on a high-performance, massive-scale engineering mindset (learned from Google) combined with the innovative, best-in-class product engineering and design (learned from Venmo).

Our people are what I’m proudest of at Button - and now we have the resources to continue building upon the amazing foundational team we’ve assembled. If you love building or selling great products, if you’re ambitious, and if you’re interested in helping define the future of mobile commerce - send us a note.