Convictional Raises $2.2 Million USD

Former Shopify employees launch B2B trade network for online retailers and brands

Toronto, ON: Founded in 2017, Convictional, a Canadian technology company and graduate of Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch, has successfully raised a $2.2 million seed round led by Lachy Groom, an early Stripe employee, with participation from AME Cloud Ventures (Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo and Alibaba board member), Tribe Capital, FundersClub, Garage Capital, and others.

Online retailers like The Helm use Convictional to onboard and integrate with third-party brands and vendors. From there, online retailers can sell products on behalf of those third-parties to consumers without taking on inventory risk. In addition to providing the underlying technology to automate processes like onboarding, inventory, product information, and order syncing, Convictional also helps online retailers source brands and vendors through its Seller Network.

Chris Grouchy, Co-Founder of Convictional, said, “To succeed with inventory, you need years of historical sales data or a time machine. The slowness and risk of inventory isn’t the right business model for ecommerce companies. Convictional helps modern retailers expand their product catalogues by giving them access to virtual supply chains and a network of brands.”

Dropship automation for ecommerce is just the beginning. Convictional’s long-term aim is to offer more forms of B2B trade to its network of sellers and buyers. “Convictional’s vision is to build the B2B Graph,” says Roger Kirkness, Co-Founder of Convictional. “Most B2B commerce relationships still exist offline. With better tools, we will reduce the friction involved in bringing those relationships online and enable more trade to happen.”

Lachy Groom, Stripe’s 30th employee and former head of Stripe Issuing, led the round. He said, "Today, you have suppliers and buyers that didn't exist six years ago using tech from the 1960s to buy and sell—it's the same dynamic I saw over and over in the early days of Stripe. When I met Convictional, it became clear that better software and a smart approach to distribution could enable more commerce to happen between businesses.