Running a business that relies on physical mail may make it seem like Birdseye CEO Matt Bogoroch has one foot in the past, but modernizing snail mail and the company’s newest product is how its business clients stay one step ahead.
After pivoting from email to direct mail marketing tools in recent years, Matt, who co-founded the Toronto startup with his COO brother Adam and CTO Shardul Frey, told BetaKit in an interview last Tuesday that they’ve received a $5 million USD ($6.9 million CAD) investment to spin out internal artificial intelligence (AI)-driven competitive intelligence tool, Yolando.
Yolando helps businesses keep tabs on their competition by checking where they stand with popular large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini
Yolando helps businesses keep tabs on their competition by checking where they stand with popular large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, then recommending ways to get and stay ahead. Yolando can be configured to send a daily prompt to an AI chatbot, like asking where the best pizza shop is in Toronto. If it isn’t your pizza shop, Yolando will assess what the competition is doing to show up in the results over you, and even draft solutions, like blog posts.
It’s essentially search engine optimization (SEO) for the AI era, Matt explained.
“The businesses that neglect this will lose a lot of ground,” Matt said. “Every single day that their competitors are publishing the right content for the right search topics, they’re further embedding themselves as a default answer.”
Birdseye’s journey to Yolando is a windy one. Matt explained that, two years and millions in venture investment after its founding in 2021, Birdseye wasn’t getting enough traction as a personalized email marketing platform. So, they made the unconventional pivot to snail mail.
The renewed platform and their other product, BirdseyePost, helps businesses from large enterprises to mom and pop shops understand who actually engages with their direct-mail marketing. If a prospective customer on 123 Main Street scans the QR code for a pizza coupon in their mailbox, the pizza shop using BirdseyePost knows 123 Main Street is more likely to become a customer.
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The issue with the direct-mail-marketing business, though, is that it takes time and money to convince customers they need BirdseyePost’s help.
“Our customer acquisition cost was quite high because direct mail, specifically, was very intent-driven,” Matt told BetaKit. “If I just called you right now and said, ‘Hey, do you want to do a direct mail campaign?’ you‘re probably like ‘I don’t know.’”
To start generating more inbound sales leads, Matt and the team focused on figuring out how they could be the best direct mail marketing platform, at least according to ChatGPT. Matt started tinkering with an internal version of what eventually became Yolando, which he claims helped generate nearly $1 million in sales by showing up in ChatGPT queries.
Impressed by the improved sales pipeline, Birdseye’s sole investor, Drive Capital, recommended spinning out the product and invested in the company a third time to do so. The $5 million USD brings Drive’s commitment to Birdseye up to $8.5 million USD over its lifetime.
“They keep backing us because of how good our founding and support team is,” Matt said. “They’ve tripled down on our company.”
Matt said Birdseye is using the funding to expand, with plans to add five sales and engineering employees to its 15-person team in Toronto. Yolando’s website touts Alexi, Sondermind, and Humanly as some of its customers. Matt said the company’s focus is on landing “bigger and bigger” customers, but, knowing AI competitive intelligence tools are watching, he declined to disclose how many customers the company serves.
“Once our competitors use all the signals, they’ll be able to better position what we’re going after,” Matt said with a laugh. “But it’s a good count.”
Feature image courtesy Birdseye.