Image: © Sergey/Stock.adobe.com
Well-known businessman Rob Solomon said Kite will function as an every-channel e-commerce platform, taking on the likes of Amazon.
Kite, a commerce company led by US entrepreneur and former CEO of GoFundMe, Rob Solomon, has closed on equity funding of $200m.
Kite was founded by Solomon and investment firms Blackstone and Juxtapose in 2022. The two firms manage the equity funds that Kite has received commitment from.
The funding will go towards Kite’s M&A strategy, as well as building out its team across functions such as marketing, design, tech and executive leadership.
The commerce platform is Solomon’s latest business venture, and he is taking on the role of CEO.
Solomon has years of executive leadership under his belt, having led crowdfunding platform GoFundMe as well as senior roles at Groupon, Yahoo and TCV.
Together with his executive team of recent hires, Solomon will lead Kite’s efforts to scale promising consumer brands. There will be a particular emphasis on finding and supporting digital-first brands.
“At Kite, we are reimagining how products are made, moved, stored, shipped, and sold—at scale,” Solomon said.
“As we build upon the platform’s suite of companies and products, the more insights we will glean on consumer preferences, buying behaviour and brand-customer engagement. As the platform matures and expands, we will refine our ability to make data-driven strategic decisions to intelligently scale our brands.”
He also claimed that brands were not “set up to thrive” nowadays because commerce infrastructures are “siloed, fragmented and inefficient.”
He said in a LinkedIn post that “Walmart owns physical commerce, and Amazon owns the digital space. But no one owns both — or beyond.”
As well as Solomon, some of Kite’s other recent executive leadership appointments include Ujjwal Singh, who has worked with GoFundMe, Facebook and Google, as CTO; Natasha Tan, who has worked with Uber, as chief design officer; and Mark Mitchke, who worked in fulfilment at Amazon, as a director on Kite’s board.
10 things you need to know direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of essential sci-tech news.
