Forerunner Ventures

In a crowded digital realm, e-commerce companies are constantly updating the customer experience to respond to emerging touchpoints and to engage consumers in novel ways. Headless commerce is gaining in popularity, designed with a flexible architecture that decouples the front end of a site from the back-end commerce functionality. By decoupling, e-commerce companies can rapidly iterate and test without disrupting the core commerce functionality, resulting in reduced development time while enriching the customer experience. Taking this one step further is Chord, a headless e-commerce technology platform that also integrates data thanks to its recent acquisition of Yaguara, a business intelligence platform. The company bills its offering as “commerce-as-a-service”, allowing e-commerce companies to make data-driven decisions using sophisticated insights on a scalable platform without making significant investments in internal data and technology teams. AlleyWatch caught up with former Glossier executives CEO Bryan Mahoney and Chairman and COO Henry Davis to learn more about the company’s decision to rebrand from Afra, the recent acquisition, future plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Eclipse Ventures, Foundation Capital, White Star Capital, Forerunner Ventures, Index Ventures, and Thrive Capital, as well as angel investors from the commerce world.