Shaped, a developer-first platform, has secured $8 million in seed funding to revolutionize how businesses of all sizes offer personalized user experiences. The company, founded by CEO Tullie Murrell and CPO Daniel Camilleri, aims to make it easier for businesses to combine their existing data with large language models and other recommendation systems. With a focus on flexibility, Shaped allows customers to choose their data sources, integration methods, language models, and scoring mechanisms for recommendations and search results.
Shaped’s journey began with a focus on video personalization, drawing from Murrell’s background in AI research. However, after participating in the Y Combinator program in 2022, the team realized the potential for a horizontal personalization platform that could cater to various media types like language, video, and audio. This expansion allowed Shaped to provide a more comprehensive solution to its customers.
The service is capable of pulling data from a wide range of sources, including data warehouses like Databricks, Google’s BigQuery, and Snowflake, as well as databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB. It can also integrate with services like Amplitude, Segment, Google Analytics, and Mixpanel. This abundance of data, especially user interaction data, empowers developers to build custom recommendation systems.
Shaped places a strong emphasis on the developer experience. While it doesn’t cater specifically to marketing personas, its goal is to provide developers with the necessary tools and data to build and test recommendation systems. The platform offers a code-first approach but also includes a dashboard for developers to test models and analyze the reasoning behind certain recommendations.
Recently, Shaped has expanded its offerings to include search capabilities. Leveraging its semantic understanding of users and content, the company aims to become a full discovery platform in the near future. This strategic move will further enhance the personalized experiences that businesses can offer their customers.
The success of Shaped’s vision is evident in its customer base, which includes well-known brands like Outdoorsy, Trela, and QVC. These companies rely on Shaped to deliver real-time video recommendations, personalized experiences, and more.
Shaped’s Series A funding round was led by Madrona Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and executives and founders from various successful companies. The investors were impressed by CEO Tullie Murrell’s expertise in recommendation systems and his deep understanding of the market. They recognized the perfect fit between Shaped’s offerings and the growing demand for personalized user experiences.
With its innovative approach and commitment to empowering developers, Shaped is poised to disrupt the recommendation system landscape. By democratizing access to powerful recommendation technologies, the company is enabling businesses of all sizes to provide hyper-personalized experiences without the need for extensive machine learning expertise. As Shaped continues to evolve and expand into new areas, it is set to shape the future of personalized user experiences across different media platforms.
