Dataships closes Series A funding round worth nearly €7m

Start-up gets backers to check in as they lever the checkout as a driver for growth

Trade

Michael Storan and Ryan McErlane, Dataships

Dataships, a data privacy software and services company which specialises in automating GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act compliance for e-commerce clients, has closed a Series A funding round worth €6.8 million.

The round was led by Osage Ventures Partners, with participation from Lavrock Ventures and the Urban Innovation Fund, and will accelerate the company’s mission to help merchants dramatically grow their marketing lists, and drive revenue growth, while maintaining complete data privacy compliance.

Founded in 2019 by Michael Storan and Ryan McErlane Dataships is co-located at NexusUCD in Dublin and in San Francisco, California, and employs 25 people. The company was founded as a compliance tech company, but found that smarter compliance management is a massively untapped lever for growth.

Ryan McErlane, co-founder and co-CEO, Dataships, said: “Most e-commerce brands follow a familiar playbook, drive traffic, offer discounts for e-mail sign-ups, maybe test a traffic de-anonymiser, hope for purchases and remarket those that don’t. But this underutilises the most impactful and brief moment for building marketing lists, the checkout.

“Since focusing on the e-commerce market, we’ve discovered something extraordinary, when done right, compliance isn’t just about protection, it’s about growth. By dynamically optimising consent language at the checkout, based on visitor location and marketing channel, we’re helping merchants achieve remarkable results in terms of increased opt-in rates, marketing contacts, and additional revenue generated through repeat purchases.

“The one-size-fits-all approach of most consent collection setups at checkout can cause problems. It usually either has too high of a standard for compliance, which loses opt-ins, or too low a standard for compliance, which poses compliance risks.

2Dataships’ platform solves this by being the only solution that guarantees both list growth and compliance at checkout. This is especially beneficial for multi-channel, multi-national brands that need to be able to serve different consent configurations for both email and SMS and for shoppers in different regions.”

Michael Storan, co-founder and co-CEO, Dataships said: “In today’s landscape where acquisition costs are still rising, personalisation is expected, and privacy is a real concern from shoppers, merchants need more than just tactics, they need a systematic approach to expand reach and more meaningfully engage their highest-value audience, purchasers.

“We’re building Dataships to be the essential growth platform for modern e-commerce brands. One that transforms compliance from a burden into a competitive advantage, helping merchants build larger, more engaged marketing lists that drive sustainable revenue growth.”

TechCentral Reporters

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