Treating product info as a social network, Hubba raises $3.1M

Collecting product information and keeping it up to date can be a massive undertaking.

Cloud-based product information network Hubba is today announcing a $3.1 million seed round to support its mission of making product info easier to manage.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1625224,"post_type":"exclusive","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,marketing,","session":"A"}']

The platform is “designed like a social network,” CEO and founder Ben Zifkin told VentureBeat via email, so that brands and retailers can “share product content, such as images, videos, documents, marketing and promotional materials, and more.”

Once everything is place, this “single source of truth” is synchronized to business connections that need the latest product content.

While virtually every product relies on correct and complete information, the company noted that a report from eBay and CFI Group found only a quarter of digital product information is accurate.

Zifkin told us that his company competes “with different entities, depending on the tier.” At the low end, he cited spreadsheets, email, FTP servers, and Dropbox.

“On the high end, we see legacy MDM [master data management], PIM [product information management] and DAM [digital asset management] players like SAP, and Informatica,” he said. Other leading PIM vendors include Stibo Systems and IBM.

“The interesting part is that we do not see any of these as competition [because] our strength is in the ability to share product information. If you have an existing process or solution, we simply act as a thin layer that [pulls] these pieces together and allows you to get the right information into the hands of the people who need it.”

The new funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth into becoming what Zifkin described as “the world’s largest product catalog for brands and retailers.” Since the beginning of 2014, Hubba has doubled its staff.

Investors in this seed round included Brightspark and The Social + Capital Partnership, as well as what the company described as unnamed “angels who serve or who have served in leadership positions at Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Airbnb, PayPal, and EMC.”

[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1625224,"post_type":"exclusive","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,marketing,","session":"A"}']

During its launch year of 2012, the company had previously raised $350,000, plus obtained an unspecified “significant founder investment.”