Retro Labs (t/a Tilt) secures £2.7 million Seed investment led by Earlybird Venture Capital

Next-gen shopping app Tilt by Ex-Revolut duo nabs $3m investment to spotlight emerging brands and make e-commerce truly social

  • Earlybird Venture Capital led the $3m round with participation from Seedcamp and TQ Ventures
  • Tilt’s interactive app beats boredom inherent in online shopping, reigniting the joy of shopping with friends, and connecting like-minded shoppers
  • Helping brands easily connect their stores, Tilt makes products visible in fresh ways – videos and livestreams. Users see products in action, and can buy directly inside the app
  • Tilt helps users discover smaller, emerging brands, giving them a fighting chance at success 

London, 22 September: E-commerce app Tilt announces today $3m backing from both European and American investors. Earlybird Venture Capital led the round with participation from Seedcamp and TQ Ventures, which was founded by Schuster Tanger, Andrew Marks and Scooter Braun.

The funding helps Tilt further grow the team and continue building out a dynamic solution tailored to the future of GenZ ecommerce.

Becoming the Social App for Shopping

Online shopping hasn’t changed enough over the last 20 years. It has not kept pace with digital expectations nor shifts in how people interact and communicate. It still involves visiting a website, often alone at home, mindlessly scrolling through pages of products until finding something right. What happened to the joy of getting a bunch of friends and heading out to shop together?

Tilt is creating a next-gen social shopping experience for the future. On the Tilt app, you can jump into video and live stream rooms created by brands, invite friends, or chat with other shoppers. Brands connect their stores to Tilt in seconds to start creating shoppable videos and livestreams. Users can see products in action and buy directly inside the app without redirection to another website, or the need to create accounts for different stores.

Existing social media apps have been integrating commerce, i.e. tacking on shopping features as an ‘add-on’ but have struggled to gain traction, since users don’t intend to shop on their platforms. Tilt focuses entirely on one space, social shopping, aiming to be THE social app for shopping. 

Tilt app’s approach is different and investors see reason to support it.

Jordan Schwarzenberger, manager of The Sidemen who’s also now an investor and advisor for Tilt shares: “Tilt is building an app to transform the way we shop and discover products forever. As we lean into a new immersive virtual world, Tilt will be there leading the way, providing a more innovative, intuitive and intimate shopping experience.”

Seasoned Dream Team

Co-founders Abhi Thanendran and Neil Shah are the brains behind Tilt. The two were early employees at Revolut, where they helped build and scale teams from scratch. Abhi, Revolut’s first data hire and former Head of Data Science helped steer Revolut towards a data-driven culture by building teams and platforms for data science and machine learning. Neil, the 5th employee at Revolut, built several products such as Metal cards, Chatbot and Payments. Later, as the Global Head of International Expansion and Authorisation, Neil spearheaded Revolut’s overseas launches.

Abhi shares: “We saw first-hand what it took for Revolut to grow from 0 to 15m+ users; now we’re focused on building something we’ve always been passionate about: the nextgen shopping experience for young shoppers.”

Solving ‘Discovery’ For a New Generation

Tilt solves a problem for newer generations of brands: E-commerce platforms have made it much easier to set up new businesses but getting noticed is now harder. What do you type into Google to find cool brands, while avoiding being bombarded by ads and dated blogs? Getting impressions on Instagram and TikTok also means brands compete against influencers, meme pages, and various other social personas. 

Tilt is still in its early stages, requiring waitlist signup. Judging by the social media buzz, it’s already attracted some of the most viral Gen-Z brands. Tilt has attracted 100s of brands and features tens of thousands of products, with more to come. Stay tuned! 

About Tilt:

Co-founded in 2021 by Revolut-alumni Abhi Thanendran and Neil Shah, Tilt is pioneering the nextgen shopping experience. Tilt’s app enables emerging Gen Z fashion brands to add a new dimension to their brand where they can build and connect with communities of like-minded shoppers who can purchase products directly within the app. Sign up for the waitlist today!

For further information: https://tilt.app/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/trytilt/ , IG: https://www.instagram.com/tilt/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trytilt/

Wishma

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