Oren Kaniel

Super excited to announce that UserEvidence has acquired Zealot, and raised an additional $7M (bringing our total to $21M) to fuel our product development and help B2B enterprises deliver customer proof across the entire funnel - from customer evidence, to advocate engagement, and 1:1 references. When Ray Rhodes and I met Sam Farber, Srikar Chava, and Brandon Jakobson back in May - we were instantly stoked on the potential. Their product instincts, speed, creativity, AI-native approach to building, and the incredible traction they had made in a short amount of time blew us away. Big congrats to the Zealot team! Customer content, advocate engagement, and reference management are not inherently distinct concepts. In fact, they are inextricably related and supportive of each other. Yet - there were different technologies in each of these 3 pillars, and arms-length integrations often fell short of their potential. Bringing these 3 pillars together under the same platform creates a massive opportunity for #customermarketers to holistically engage and harness and organizations most important asset - their customers. In an age of increasing noise and complexity when it comes to choosing the right vendor - substantive, credible, specific proof - whether delivered as content or delivered through live connection with a reference - is going to be the key to inspiring buyer confidence. Customer Marketers will be at the center of the organization, and UE + Zealot will power the future of #customermarketing Read more about the news here - https://lnkd.in/gd5Dygu8

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The race to agentic commerce is a relay. Partnerships across the entire customer journey are driving agentic commerce from pilots to scale. This is accelerating adoption and determining who sets the standards and owns customer relationships as the space matures. Four companies have emerged as the gravitational centers of AI commerce: OpenAI - The infrastructure leader with 16 partnerships since 2024, plus a $1.1B acquisition of Statsig to expand its commerce capabilities. Google - Scaling through major brand partnerships (Home Depot, Behr, Alaska Airlines) by embedding AI assistants directly into their platforms. Shopify - Strategically positioned to own the checkout layer by integrating Shop Pay with OpenAI and Perplexity. Perplexity - The emerging integrator, connecting the customer journey through AI-powered discovery and search. The fragmented nature of AI commerce tools makes partnerships essential. No single company is building everything needed for complete autonomous shopping. Success requires: -AI models for understanding and prediction -Data infrastructure for processing and insights -Selling platforms for transactions -Payment rails for secure, frictionless checkout Companies are discovering that strategic partnerships allow them to accelerate AI adoption without building everything in-house, while accessing specialized capabilities across the tech stack. While public launches remain limited, major payment networks are quietly laying groundwork for the future. Visa has partnered with AI firms including Anthropic and IBM to integrate AI capabilities into its Intelligent Commerce platform. Mastercard and PayPal are developing similar agentic payment systems. The complex requirements for autonomous payments – including authentication, fraud detection, and consumer trust – position incumbent networks as essential partners in the ecosystem. We are moving toward a world where AI agents can discover products, compare options, and complete purchases autonomously. These partnerships will determine who controls the customer relationship.

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I’m excited to announce that Klaviyo has acquired Gatsby a longtime partner helping brands turn social engagement into lasting relationships. Social commerce is expected to surpass $100B by 2026, yet many brands still struggle to capture that momentum. Bringing Gatsby into Klaviyo is another big step toward building the best B2C CRM - so every interaction, from a like to a purchase, helps you grow faster. Welcome to the team, Gatsby. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gGzcZW3Y

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Launch day! Continuing the drum beat on new provider integrations: today we're announcing a native integration with Anyscale! Anyscale kicks off a series of AI-specific provider integrations we're going to be announcing for the remainder of the year. When I started Vantage, I had a belief that companies were going to be using more and more third-party providers beyond the main three hyperscalers to run their infrastructure. Today, AI has materially accelerated that trend. Each of these AI providers has their own bespoke pricing structure that we need to work with to provide the single pane of glass view into total cost of ownership for an organization. As companies leverage these AI providers, they expect that their Finops platform has support accordingly. As with the ~25 other native integrations Vantage currently supports, Anyscale costs will support all the #FinOps features you know and love across cost allocation, budgeting, forecasting and beyond. Getting starting is as simple as providing an API key and we do all the heavy lifting from there. To see all the details, check out the blog post below.

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The ONLY thing we are breaking our heads on across our B2B global portfolio is growth, growth and growth - nothing else. Almost all our teams have figured out product, PMF and a lot more very systematically and the key problem statement is to find growth channels that are both SUSTAINABLE and SCALABLE -- both are very important to understand and get right. And it is continuing to be very very challenging - everything that works also flattens out and doesn't scale. Throwing money at it doesn't really solve it. GTM has never been harder.

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From Acquisition to LTV: Why the Smartest eComm Apps Are Playing the Long Game. 🚀 Having led growth at mobile-first startups and scaled revenue past $100M, I’ve seen the playbook evolve — and the latest AppsFlyer eCommerce App Marketing Report makes it crystal clear: growth today is fueled by retention, not just acquisition. • Remarketing budgets rose 29% YoY in 2025, with iOS up 42% and Android 16%. • China-based apps, already dominant in iOS UA, ramped up remarketing globally. • But the real shift? Owned channels now outperform paid media for both conversions and retention. 🔥The old playbook — pouring budget into paid UA and hoping for retention — is broken. Today’s leading eComm brands are aligning around one goal: maximize long-term LTV through smarter user journeys. That starts by acquiring high-value users early with intelligent bidding tools like tROAS and app-conversion bidding — and keeping them engaged with AI-powered personalization, loyalty offers, and seamless web-to-app experiences. As Lee Jones from Google puts it: “Leading eCommerce brands are using intelligent bidding to find high-value users early, knowing they’ll drive stronger retention and order value.” Winning teams are asking: • What signals from the first session predict high-value behavior? • How do we unify KPIs across web and app to align teams and journeys? • How can AI optimize not just acquisition—but re-engagement and loyalty too? 📊 Standout stat: iOS users convert 1.3 days faster than Android, with a 39% higher first-time purchase rate and 68% stronger re-purchase performance — reaching that critical second conversion faster and proving the power of loyalty-driven growth. 💡 adidas saw 2.4X higher ROAS from app users compared to mobile web. This shows what happens when retention becomes the strategy, not the afterthought. Mobile apps are key to long-term retention, with app users delivering higher order values and stronger brand loyalty than web users. To succeed in today’s landscape, growth must be: • Predictive, not reactive • Product-led, not channel-led • Focused on lifetime relationships, not just installs The long game belongs to companies that align data, product, and performance marketing from day one. That’s where real LTV is won. 👉 Want more insights? Read the full AppsFlyer eCommerce report here: https://shorturl.at/GSxwv #LTV #Retention #Growth #Marketing #MobileMarketing #ProductLedGrowth #AI #eCommerceStrategy #Sponsored AppsFlyer

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Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Newton Research’s oversubscribed $9M Series A, alongside Greycroft, Bessemer Venture Partners, S4S Ventures, and LiveRamp Ventures. Newton is redefining what agentic AI can do for marketing analytics, enabling brands and agencies to: - Run customer 360 journey analysis across touchpoints - Segment audiences and build predictive models - Automate attribution, incrementality, and media mix modeling - Generate dynamic, natural language-driven reporting - Save up to 126 hours/month and achieve 10x analytics output Their pre-built “blueprints” let non-technical teams securely run advanced analytics on their own data with just a few clicks. John Hoctor, Matthew Emans, and Steven Bennett have successfully built and exited multiple companies. We love to back repeat founders on their most ambitious ideas, like Newton Research. Link to more in comments.

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