I’m really excited to announce our recent investment in Scratch.  You can read some coverage here.

The problem that Scratch is solving is something that is quite near and dear to my heart. Since I’ve worked in the consumer internet space, I’ve been interested in the problem of product discovery. How do you select from the vast choice presented by the internet? How do you find the right thing in subjective, taste-driven categories? How do you shop for people when you don’t know exactly what they would want? And how do you do this all in a way that is fun, and doesn’t take forever?

This was something I thought about a lot at Ebay (12+ years ago). The beauty of Ebay was the vast selection of all sorts of products. But this selection was also the reason discovery was so difficult. Fast forward to day, and everyone buys online in a myriad of ways, and the paradox of choice has exploded exponentially.

Scratch is looking to solve this problem. It allows consumers to more efficiently find the right items in a broad range of categories through the help of curators and data driven personalization. The result is that you buy better products much more quickly through a natural, conversational process.

Already, I’ve used the service to buy plants for our office, birthday gifts, furniture and accessories for my home office, apparel, and backpacks for the NextView team. And this is just in the last few weeks!

The company is led by Matt Zisow, who we first got to know through his time at our portfolio company Custommade. He is building an amazing early team with world class operators from Tripadvisor, Wayfair, and others. We are excited to be making this investment alongside Bessemer, Red Swan, and Matt Salzberg. The compay is currently in a private beta, but is letting in new members in waves. Click here to join the waitlist, and I’ll do what I can to get you in as soon as possible ☺