Reuters – Freshplum Raises Seed Funding

Palo Alto start-up Freshplum has raised $1.4 million in seed funding. Investors include New Enterprise Associates, Greylock Partners, Google Ventures and Charles River Ventures, as well as a number of current and former executives from Facebook, Google and PayPal.

Reuters – Palo Alto start-up Freshplum hopes to take the guesswork out of digital commerce by using analytics software, data science and math to help companies make decisions like how to price merchandise.

After a month under wraps, Freshplum announced Tuesday that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates, Greylock Partners, Google Ventures and Charles River Ventures, as well as a number of current and former executives from Facebook, Google and PayPal.

The company was co-founded by Sam Odio, who formerly worked at Facebook after his photo-sharing start-up Divvyshot was acquired by the social networking giant. The other co-founders are Nick Alexander and Michael Yuan.

Freshplum will target small- to medium-sized online sellers with revenue but without the time to hire an analytics team. Odio said Freshplum will be able to handle data analysis for these businesses.

“Selling goods and services online continues to be more art than science,” said Odio. “Eighty-two percent of the companies we talk to price their products on a ‘hunch’ because they lack the tools necessary to dive deep into the data.”