TheFind

TheFind, Inc. operated as a discovery shopping search engine, positioning itself distinctly from comparison shopping platforms by focusing on lifestyle products like apparel, home goods, and beauty. The company was established in 2006 by CEO Siva Kumar and CTO Shashikant Khandelwal. The initial inspiration for the venture came from Kumar observing the cumbersome online shopping process his wife endured, which motivated him to create a more streamlined and visually-oriented shopping experience. He connected with Khandelwal, then a student at Stanford, who developed the first prototype of the search engine.

The company initially launched as FatLens Inc., specializing in event ticket search, but quickly pivoted and re-launched as TheFind.com on October 31, 2006, to concentrate on lifestyle product discovery. Its business model centered on providing comprehensive and relevant search results ranked by popularity, not by a pay-for-placement system. Revenue was generated through a combination of cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-action (CPA) relationships with affiliate networks and other shopping engines. The platform utilized proprietary web-crawling technology to index over 500 million products from more than 500,000 stores and online merchants, which could be accessed via its website and mobile apps. TheFind secured significant venture capital, including a $15 million Series C round in 2007 led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from initial investors like Redpoint Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

After nine years of operation, Facebook (now Meta Platforms) acquired TheFind on March 13, 2015, for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, TheFind's search engine and applications were taken offline. Key members of TheFind's team joined Facebook with the objective of integrating their technology to enhance the relevance and effectiveness of Facebook's advertising platform. This move was seen as a strategic step for Facebook to bolster its e-commerce and ad-targeting capabilities by leveraging TheFind's extensive structured product data and search technology.

Keywords: discovery shopping, search engine, e-commerce, product search, lifestyle products, online shopping, Siva Kumar, Shashikant Khandelwal, Facebook acquisition, ad technology, affiliate marketing, CPC, CPA, vertical search, comparison shopping, product discovery, retail technology, shopping aggregation, venture capital, Meta Platforms