Today, Constructor announced that we closed a Series B fundraising round, bringing the company’s valuation to $550 million.
I write this note to remind myself and every person at Constructor why we’re here. We’re very proud of this fundraise, but it’s important for us to remember that it’s only a side-effect of doing good work for our customers. Our customers switching from established, legacy competitors to us, and sticking by us (with a 98.5% average retention rate over the last three years) is why our new investors were interested in the company.
Our customers did not have to switch to us and do not have to stick by us. They do so if and only if we do good work for them. If the fundraise is not used to make our company serve our customers better, then we’re missing the point.
We started Constructor off with an idea: that learning shoppers’ preferences via AI can give them a far better search and product discovery experience than the older keyword-based engines they were used to. We believed that if we reimagined a search engine by putting AI at the core of our system from the beginning instead of bolting it on to a keyword-matching engine, it would lead to real, measurable value for our customers and for their shoppers— happier shoppers who would buy more because they were served better. It took us four years to build our search engine from scratch, and that’s why we didn’t go to market with it until 2019, but we believed then that it was worth it and we still believe that now. We believe it because it’s what’s enabled us to never lose an A/B test, and it’s what’s enabled us to consistently make our service better for our customers and for their shoppers.
But we also believe there’s always room to serve our customers better. And that’s the main thing we want to use this investment for. Our success will always be a symptom and function of our customers’ success. That’s the main thing we can’t lose sight of. It’s not about how much AI we use, or how proud we are of our technology. These things are means to an end. That end should always be serving our customers and giving them the best experience available anywhere.
We don’t plan to spend all of the money from this fundraise— we weren’t fundraising at the time it was offered, and we’ve always tried to build a business not reliant on venture capital. But the money we do spend, we’ll spend on finding ways to serve our customers better.
- Eli Finkelshteyn, CEO, Constructor