Former Bolt CEO Launches AI-Powered E-commerce Startup Spangle

Bolt's former CEO is launching a new e-commerce startup

Maju Kuruvilla, who left the CEO role of controversial one-click checkout startup Bolt last year, is back. He's launching his own startup, focused on a different problem for online shoppers: what he calls "check-in." When you click on an ad for something like a t-shirt, the experience afterwards can feel a little clunky. The website you land on might not even have the product you clicked on to begin with. That causes many shoppers to bounce back, hurting conversion rates, Kuruvilla told TechCrunch. Kuruvilla wants to change that with AI. His new startup, Spangle AI, creates custom landing pages for shoppers based on what they searched for or clicked on. It sells to major retailers looking to better monetize their traffic and is powered by an AI model called ProductGPT that decodes customer interactions. Based in Seattle, Spangle AI raised a $6 million seed round last year, it told TechCrunch. Its investors include Seattle-based Madrona Ventures and Streamlined Ventures, which is in Silicon Valley. Spangle AI joins a host of other e-commerce startups who sell AI to customize online shopping experiences and improve conversions. Vancouver-based Unbounce, which sells no-code landing pages, raised almost $40 million in 2020 while Dubai-based Qeen.AI raised $10 million earlier this month for its smart shopping assistants. It's still early in Spangle AI's journey, but the startup claims to be seeing promising signs from its product, which has boosted conversion rates by 51% in early testing. Armed with its product and these case studies, Spangle AI says it will now focus mostly on sales. Kuruvilla was Bolt's CEO for two years and previously worked for almost eight years at Amazon. He replaced Bolt's outspoken co-founder Ryan Breslow in 2022 after Breslow's fiery Twitter tirade against Y Combinator. That didn't end the drama for Breslow, though, after he was sued by Bolt investors over a $30 million personal loan he took out of Bolt. Breslow has since returned as CEO, defended the loan as a vote of confidence in Bolt, and announced that Bolt's legal troubles are over. Kuruvilla, who jokingly announced on X that he had "one-click checked out" from Bolt when he left last year, is looking ahead. "I just love e-commerce and I love solving hard problems," he told TechCrunch.

Madrona backs Spangle, a new e-commerce company led by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla

The new startup, founded by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, came out of stealth mode Tuesday and announced a seed investment from Seattle VC firm Madrona along with Silicon Valley firm Streamlined Ventures. Kuruvilla is a former Amazon VP who more recently spent two years leading Bolt, a controversial e-commerce "one-click checkout" startup founded by Ryan Breslow, who stepped down in 2022. Kuruvilla, who was CTO at the time, replaced Breslow and led the company until April of last year, when he was reportedly removed by the board. Now he's at the helm of Spangle, which is using AI to help retailers personalize online shopping by bridging the gap between hyper-targeted marketing and more general shopping experiences that customers have when they land on a website or app. "Spangle addresses e-commerce right from the first touch -- at check-in," Kuruvilla wrote on LinkedIn. Here's more from Kuruvilla via the company's press release: "Personalization across retail has failed to live up to its promise due to its reliance on sparse, expensive, and backward looking customer data. No single merchant has enough customer data to make accurate predictions, and customers want more than repeat purchases. Inspired by social media platforms, customers are seeking relevance and variety, and we're delivering on these changing expectations with a next-generation native AI e-commerce platform." Scott Jacobsen, managing director at Madrona, said Spangle helps brands "turn advertising traffic into a high-performing channel that actually delights the customer." "With Spangle, brands can use the power of AI to take what they know of the user's interests and turn around a customer experience that's relevant and delightful," he wrote on LinkedIn. Kruuvilla and Spangle CTO Fei Wang, who co-founded Spangle, are based in the Seattle region, along with a handful of other employees. Wang was previously CTO at Saks OFF 5th and spent nearly 12 years at Amazon. Karen Moon, former CEO of Trendalytics and a longtime consumer startup investor, is COO at Spangle.