Regina Ye said she and Topsort co-founder Francisco Larrain have learned a lot in the two years since the auction advertising startup launched.
The company raised $8 million in seed funding in 2022, valuing the company at $110 million. Topsort develops retail media technology for small businesses to use auctions as a way to create effective advertising.
They were tired of the complexity of creating ad campaigns on Meta, Amazon, and Google, so they created a simple API for users to install. When clients launch a campaign, they can add items such as sponsor lists, banner ads, and video ads. They then control how ads are displayed, how ad quality and relevance are measured, and who can launch ad campaigns.
The founders also realized that their plug-and-play product resonated with e-commerce markets of all sizes. Today, Topsort is used by marketplaces in 35 countries, including Poshmark and Youtravel.me.
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to really get great advertising results,” Ye told TechCrunch. “Since then, we’ve tried a lot of things and found what works, and last year was incredible growth for us. Our revenue grew almost 10 times, and we have similar goals this year.”
Topsort has also shifted its focus to be more enterprise-friendly and built more advanced features. It now counts companies like Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Danone among its customers.
All this growth has excited investors, who have injected an additional $20 million in Series A funding into Topsort, raising its post-money valuation to $150 million. Upload Ventures led the round with support from existing investors including Quiet Capital and Pear Ventures. The company has raised a total of $28.6 million so far.
The company is now focused on what happens after the cookie disappears. Topsort wants to correct advertising’s reputation as being “dodgy” when it comes to user privacy. Ye said it created a Cleanroom feature to merge user data without actually being “creepy.”
“Everyone wants to know what happens to advertising after cookies, and we think we have the answer to a clean advertising solution,” Ye said. “We spent three years delivering a very reliable product, and today, we probably have the most comprehensive product on the market.”
