8fig raises $6.5 million Seed round to help online sellers accelerate their growth

Israeli startup 8fig announced the completion of a $6.5 million Seed funding round led by Battery Ventures with participation by HetZ Ventures, LocalGlobe and the investment arm of the Jesselson Family. 8fig was founded a year ago with the goal to disrupt the way online sellers grow their businesses.

The company, which employs 15 people, 10 in its offices in Tel Aviv and the rest in Austin, Texas, says it aims to help online sellers grow as fast as possible to become 8-figure sellers without giving up an equity stake in their business. In order to achieve that, 8fig is implementing a variety of technologies that merge payments, analytics and forecasting technologies allowing sellers access to tailor-fitted tools to plan, manage, finance and execute their supply chains. The core base of the technology is their AI forecasting engine.

Co-founded in 2020 by Yaron Shapira (CEO), Assaf Dagan (CTO) and Roei Yellin (CRO), 8fig’s operations are split between Tel Aviv, where R&D teams operate, and their headquarters in the U.S. (Austin, Texas) where marketing, growth, product and customer success teams are based.

Shapira and Dagan worked together at Mercury Interactive (acquired by HP for $4.5 billion). They later joined the founding teams at Capriza (raised $70 million from A16Z) and Check (acquired by Intuit for $360 million), where they deepened their experience in payments and the fintech sector. They crossed paths with Roei when Assaf and Yaron most recently co-founded Qlarium (acquired by Delta Capita), which supplied underwriting to the international supply chain. Roei was COO of Prytek’s, Qlariums biggest investor, and participated in over 30 other fintech investments in his time with Prytek.

“We found a huge opportunity to truly disrupt how business is being done in the e-commerce space, with cutting-edge technology - and we are grateful to have top tier investors joining us,” said Shapira. “The recognition from our investors, combined with the strong traction we are seeing from the market, increases our confidence in the future growth of our company.”

The size and potential of the market that 8fig addresses can be understood from data published by Amazon at the start of 2021, which found that 54% of the source of Amazon's revenue is from independent, third party sellers, and that there are currently 2.4 million active sellers around the world. 49% of these sellers are based in the United States, 7% in China and 7% in the United Kingdom. The forecast is for 1.5 million new sellers to join Amazon's platform in 2021 alone.

“When we met Yaron, Assaf and Roei, we were immediately struck by the relevance and size of the opportunity,” said Shiran Shalev of Battery Ventures. “Having studied the continued shift from offline retail to e-commerce, and the unique challenges small businesses have in accessing capital and financial services, we believe 8Fig is uniquely positioned to become the financial system of record and capital partner to e-commerce merchants worldwide.”