Australian tech startup Carted has secured $13 million in seed funding and is looking to revolutionise e-commerce by creating a universal commerce API that will allow developers and content creators to build a checkout anywhere.
Founded by entrepreneurs Holly Cardew and Mike Angell, Carted aims to smooth out the fragmented nature of e-commerce and give consumers the ability to seamlessly purchase products they have viewed online or on social media.
Carted’s $13 million funding round included a mix of big name investors, led by Blackbird Ventures and including the likes of Tidal Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures (through its scout fund), as well as Grok Ventures – the investment office for Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes.
Congratulations to @hollyccc and @evulse on the @carted seed round and welcome to the Blackbird portfolio! 💜 We can’t wait to watch you build the next generation of commerce 💥
— Blackbird (@blackbirdvc) May 4, 2021
Learn more in our investment notes by @michaelatolo: https://t.co/RM1n42W7ut
(ps: they’re hiring!) pic.twitter.com/pov7IJCgup
Pre-seed investors included co-founder of Google Drive and Google Fonts David Wurtz and Steve Baxter’s investment syndicate TEN13.
Carted co-founders Holly Cardew and Mike Angell previously founded Vop in early 2020, designed to create shoppable video experiences on TikTok. From there, the entrepreneurs discovered a wider need to address the fragmented nature of online retail, and they founded Carted.
“We want to build solutions for the next generation of commerce,” Cardew said.
“Commerce doesn’t have to be complicated, ultimately we are about empowering developers and platforms to make commerce seamless by connecting them to millions of merchants and billions of products with a single API.”
Carted was launched during the pandemic, as people around the globe were confined to their homes and turning to online retail. The startup is set to revolutionise the paradigm of what online shopping is and who can be a merchant.
“Carted provides a universal commerce API that can programmatically submit orders to any ecommerce site,” co-founder Mike Angell said.
“It has the ability to trigger any and all affiliate systems, settle currency differences and trigger coupon codes; and enables third-party payment solutions on stores that don’t currently support it, like Google Pay.”
I’m so excited to share that we have closed a USD$10m funding round led by @blackbirdvc to build the next generation of commerce 🎉
— Holly Cardew (@hollyccc) May 3, 2021
There are so many incredible people who have decided to join us on the journey! A massive thank you!
More about it here:https://t.co/4HMwdFbTUj
Holly Cardew said Carted will fundamentally change the way commerce is conducted across the internet and will be “able to turn content platforms into commerce platforms”.
“We are excited to grow the team both in Australia and the US, as well as remotely,” she said.
Michael Tolo, Principal of Blackbird Ventures, which led the recent funding round, said Carted is “bold, ambitious and consequential on a global scale.”
“Holly and Mike deeply understand the problem and their customers, because they are their customers,” Tolo said about the Carted co-founders.
“The ability to sell any product from any merchant on any content platform through direct checkout fundamentally changes the way we activate commerce through online content and communities, enabling the first generation of digital-native experiential commerce.
“This is not about incrementally improving ecommerce, it is about building the infrastructure to embed commerce within the online experiences that mean the most to us.”