Heartcore Consumer Insights 🚀

15/09/20 Edition

Sep 15, 2020

Hey there!

Long time no see. Hope you’ve not missed us too much :)

During that break, we’ve thought about ways to provide more value to you this year. You’ve probably noticed that the design is different. We’ve decided to move from Revue to Substack as we feel like the tool is more powerful.

Apart from that, we’d love to get feedback directly from you on what we could do to make this newsletter more valuable. If you have 1 minute (literally - we also hate answering (long) surveys) to share your thoughts with us, that’d be wonderful 🙏

Oh, and we’ve also done a full recap of interesting stuff that happened in August and early Sept. in the Consumer world (hence the somewhat long edition) so if you didn’t have time to stay up to date while you were on the beach, don’t worry we’ve got you.

Thank you for being a dear reader,

✍️ WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYES

How to systematically measure and drive Word of Mouth acquisition

Word of Mouth is notoriously hard to measure.
Online social media, the most measurable form of Word of Mouth, is only the tip of the iceberg: 80% of online sharing happens through dark social (untracked channels like WhatsApp, Text, and e-mail).
There are a few common methods that companies use, each with their own major drawbacks: NPS/Attribution Surveys: these surveys suffer from low response rates/respondent bias, Social Listening Tools: crawl social platforms and the web to track mentions and engagement, but miss dark social and offline word of mouth.
Enter the "Word of Mouth Coefficient".
WOMC = (New Organic Users)/(Returning Users + Non-Organic New Users).
The Word of Mouth Coefficient has 2 components:
1. New Organic Users: First-time product users that we consider to be driven by WoM (i.e. they can't be traced to any trackable source such as a paid ad).
2. Active Users: The denominator of the ratio is everyone else (Returning Users + Non-Organic New Users). The time period depends on your retention metric (Daily, Weekly, Monthly Active user).
For example, if the denominator of your WOMC is WAU, and the coefficient is 0.1, that means every WAU generates 0.1 new users per week via word of mouth. In simpler terms, for every 10 weekly active users, they will generate 1 new user via word of mouth.
At the center of the WOMC is the assumption that active users predict new organics. This conceptually makes sense (active users are more likely to talk about your product than those who have never used/have stopped using it).
Data supports this relationship. Here is an example from 3+ years of weekly active user data from an e-commerce company. The data is arranged in a scatterplot and shows a strong linear relationship between active users and new organics. The relationship holds, even when weekly active users jump from 10,000 to 70,000 (a 7x increase)!

Defining interactive e-commerce

Pinduoduo is a Chinese “interactive e-commerce” startup that rose from 0 to $100bn in 5 years.
What does interactive e-commerce really mean?
Taking a step back, it’s clear that shopping is as much a pastime and method of bonding with others as it is a commercial exchange of money and goods.
Offline shopping often holds a delightful element of serendipity that is missing from the step by step process of traditional e-commerce, mostly focussed on efficiency, wider choice, and convenience (Amazon anyone?).
Interactive e-commerce can be understood as a philosophy toward online shopping that humanizes the online shopping experience, applying insights that have been traditionally associated with gaming/social/entertainment platforms.
Interactive e-commerce bundles three key pillars:

Recommendation: traditional e-commerce is designed around a search-based, intent-driven experience. This goes along with the assumption that the shopper has a clear idea of what product they are looking for. The assumption behind the interactive e-commerce model is that through the shopping process, the shopper can find the elusive item that they did not yet know they needed.
Entertainment: While an emerging phenomenon in the digital sphere, the concept of blending commerce and entertainment is hardly novel in the physical world: shopping malls include not just retail outlets, but cinemas, arcades, and playgrounds. Whether in the form of live streaming, games, or flash sales, the 2nd component of interactive e-commerce prioritizes fun for the user, lengthening the duration of their visits.
Community: With interactive e-commerce, the involvement of a broader social component not only provides insights for improved recommendations but also creates a digital shopping environment that meets the innately human need of connecting with others.

Interestingly, DAU/MAU ratios, most frequently used to measure the “stickiness” of social networks, are key metrics to assess interactive e-commerce businesses.
China's e-commerce leaders display (very) impressive figures on that front:

👏 WHERE THE MONEY WENT

🇪🇺 Notable EU early stage Consumer rounds :

Finematter, a Denmark-based marketplace connecting independent fine jewelers to consumers, raises €1.6M with Heartcore 🖤 - link
Fronted, a UK-based loan provider to cover rent deposit raises an undisclosed amount with Passion Capital - link
Klima, a Germany-based provider of CO2 offsetting services, raises €5M with e.ventures/HV Holtzbrinck Ventures - link

🇺🇸 Notable US early-stage Consumer rounds :

The Nudge, a US-based text planning service for city exploration, raises $2M with Lightspeed/NextView - link
PrizePool, a US-based savings account that makes saving more compelling through cash prizes and social features, raises $4.3M with Accomplice/Bling/Coatue - link
Shef, a US-based homemade food marketplace that enables cooks to sell meals in their local communities, raises $8.8M with YC/Craft/M13 - link
Commonstock, a US-based stock investing platform designed to share investment knowledge and decisions, raises $9.7M with Floodgate/QED - link
Juni Learning, a US-based education platform that offers engaging courses for kids taught online by live instructors, raises $10.5M with Forerunner/Index/Pear VC - link
Lunchclub, a US-based platform making introductions for networking, raises $24.2M with Coatue/Lightspeed - link

🔭 Notable later stage Consumer rounds :

Seated, a US-based mobile restaurant discovery app that rewards customers for dining out, raises $30M with Insight/Craft - link
Weee!, a US-based online grocery delivery platform that offers Asian specialty products, raises $35M with DST - link
BlockFi, a US-based non-bank lender that offers crypto asset backed USD loans, raises $50M with Morgan Creek/XRP Capital/Valar - link
Dutchie, a US-based online cannabis ordering platform that connects consumers to local cannabis retailers, raises $35M with Thrive/Casa Verde/Thirty-Five - link
Thirty Madison, a US-based provider of D2C treatments of hair loss, migraines and indigestion, raises $47M with Polaris/Maveron/Northzone/J&J - link
Skillshare, a US-based ed-tech platform offering online courses in creative fields, raises $66M with OMERS/USV/Burda Principal Investments - link
Lambda School, a US-based online software school financed through ISAs, raises $74M with Gigafund/Tandem/GV/GGV/Stripe - link
Patreon, a US-based online platform that lets artists get paid directly by fans to support their creation, raises $90M with NEA/Wellington/Lone Pine - link
Omio, a Germany-based transport search tool that compares and combines rail, air, bus, and car, raises $100M with Temasek/Kinnevik/Goldman/NEA/Kleiner - link
VooDoo, a France-based game developer & publisher, raises an undisclosed amount with Tencent - link
Robinhood, a US-based stock brokerage that allows customers to buy and sell stocks/options/ETFs with zero commission, raises $200M with D1 Capital Partners - link
Impossible Foods, a US-based plant-based meat, and dairy products producer, raises $200M with Coatue/Mirae Asset Global Investments/Temasek - link
Gymshark, a UK-based D2C fitness brand, raises £200M with General Atlantic - link
Warby Parker, a US-based optical e-commerce & retail player, raises $245M with Durable Capital Partners/D1 Capital Partners - link

🖤 - HEARTCORE

Super happy and proud to have Finematter join the Heartcore Family. Welcome Mie & Caroline 🖤
Congrats to Zolar on their €15M Series B extension to push solar equipment democratization further ☀️

Much 🖤 from Heartcore

Heartcore Insights