Introducing Rye

November 11, 2022

6 min

Arjun Bhargava

Co-founder and CEO, Rye.com

20% of retail transaction has shifted online from traditional channels and the sector is growing. Consumers are buying products in new, innovative ways. The economics of selling online has gotten way more complicated. And social commerce is on a massive uptrend. The mission of Rye is to lean into these changes and build the foundation for the next generation of eCommerce.

The Genesis of Rye: A Collaboration of Seasoned Entrepreneurs

Rye started with a text in early 2021 from Jamie Quint — a friend and former colleague at Reddit, who led its monetization efforts and, more recently, was Head of Growth at Notion. He wanted to know if I could hop on a Zoom with his friend and former co-founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, to “incubate a project idea we have.” It was a life-changing text for me: “Hell yea! I love what Justin’s built,” I responded.

When I joined that call, I was greeted by four amazing, seasoned entrepreneurs who would eventually become co-founders of Rye.

  • Justin Kan, who co-founded Twitch

  • Tikhon Bernstam, who successfully exited two companies: Scribd and Parse

  • Robin Chan, an early Zynga and Notion employee, and founder of Operator

The topic of conversation was centered around one goal: how could we be prepared for the next wave of eCommerce disruption?

We knew we needed a technical leader that could help recruit and build the vision. The obvious choice was my former Reddit colleague, Saurabh Sharma, who built infrastructure that could handle >100M users to join as CTO.

The Evolution of eCommerce Channels

In eCommerce, the pandemic caused a Cambrian explosion of new shopping experiences. Overnight, almost every retail shopper moved their entire presence online. Companies realized the potential for capturing the new demand of online shoppers and started making more interesting ways for people to shop. Live streaming shopping, affiliate blogs, influencer shops, and more started gaining more traction. Over the course of a year, 60% of previous online shoppers who primarily shopped on large marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart moved to shop on other eCommerce experiences. There was also a watershed moment for Shopify, where merchants realized they didn’t have to be stuck in Amazon’s ecosystem and could now own their own infrastructure stack. Shopify gave merchants tools for inventory management, order fulfillment, and more interesting customer pricing models.

However, there became a clear disconnect between brands/merchants and the people and companies that sell their products. Merchants were handcuffed to either sell directly on Amazon or to use Facebook and Google ads to generate sales. The overall cost of this customer acquisition has increased by 222% in the last eight years and 41% in the last year alone. On the other side, platform developers had to sign up to bloated affiliate networks with limited product inventory to sell products or go through an inefficient process of creating contracts directly with brands.

Rye's Vision: Building an Open and Efficient eCommerce Network

After months of researching the market and talking to brands and sellers, my co-founders and I started to sketch together what the future of eCommerce should look like: an open and programmatic network that could hold the collection of all products — where any brand can plug in their inventory, and any seller could pull from. This network should allow sellers to spin up an eCommerce experience in minutes, similar to how Stripe enabled payments in minutes.

Benefits of Rye's Network for Shoppers, Merchants, and Developers

We believe this network will bring dramatic benefits to shoppers, merchants, and, most importantly, developers:

  • Shoppers will enjoy a seamless, unified shopping experience from product discovery to checkout. This means being able to pay for items from different stores or marketplaces in one cart, and without waiting to be redirected out of the platform.

  • Merchants will be able to list their inventory within our database and have way more efficient tools than what exists today, allowing them to: get higher-quality customer data, reduce cost to acquire new customers, and capture sales on emerging eCom channels.

  • Developers can now set up any platform with instant, unlimited access to the largest inventory of products.

Developing the Rye Platform: MVP and Future Plans

My co-founders and I established Rye in order to start deploying the building blocks of this network. We’ve spent the last year building an MVP of this product to showcase the value of how this could work and how it makes eCommerce way more efficient.

Core Features of Rye's API

  • Programmatic Checkout: First, we have developed a 1-click programmatic checkout that lets shoppers add their payment information right on the shopping experience instead of having to pay on a merchant’s website. This removes redirection to make checkouts frictionless.

  • Shopify & Amazon Business Product Data: Second, our API has the largest inventory of Shopify and Amazon product data. Developers can request an API key and search through our catalog for free, requesting data such as price, inventory counts, product variants, and more. In addition, Rye offers a search and recommendation engine that allows for a much more personalized product discovery experience.

Seed Funding and Rye’s Roadmap

We’re thrilled to announce that we have raised $14 million in Seed funding to help us build the next evolution of eCommerce. A16z led the round with support from its Cultural Leadership Fund and participation from Solana Ventures, GOAT Capital, L Catterton, Electric Ant, Electric Feel Ventures, Andre Iguodala, Javale McGee, and James Beshara. We’ll use the money to invest in our product and engineering teams to build out additional tools for developers and merchants.

So, what are we building next? Our core API already solves quite a few challenges that eCommerce developers face; however, the upcoming features on our roadmap will make selling products far easier. We’ll build out a unified checkout experience where shoppers can pay for items from different stores all in one cart. Finally, we’ll enable merchants to directly connect to the Rye API, which will unlock faster product data and an instant checkout experience.

We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along on Twitter @Rye and LinkedIn @Rye.

The Future of Rye: Decentralization and Community Engagement

Eventually, the Rye API will be fully decentralized, built on the Solana blockchain. To achieve this, we need to work with merchants and sellers directly and partner with developers in the community who understand our vision and want to build with us. We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along with our updates and to get early access / GitHub access, tweet us at @Rye and join our Discord.

Invitation to Collaborate and Career Opportunities at Rye

Also, if you’re interested in working with the core team, we’re hiring across a number of roles. You can apply here.

Introducing Rye

November 11, 2022

6 min

Arjun Bhargava

Co-founder and CEO, Rye.com

20% of retail transaction has shifted online from traditional channels and the sector is growing. Consumers are buying products in new, innovative ways. The economics of selling online has gotten way more complicated. And social commerce is on a massive uptrend. The mission of Rye is to lean into these changes and build the foundation for the next generation of eCommerce.

The Genesis of Rye: A Collaboration of Seasoned Entrepreneurs

Rye started with a text in early 2021 from Jamie Quint — a friend and former colleague at Reddit, who led its monetization efforts and, more recently, was Head of Growth at Notion. He wanted to know if I could hop on a Zoom with his friend and former co-founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, to “incubate a project idea we have.” It was a life-changing text for me: “Hell yea! I love what Justin’s built,” I responded.

When I joined that call, I was greeted by four amazing, seasoned entrepreneurs who would eventually become co-founders of Rye.

  • Justin Kan, who co-founded Twitch

  • Tikhon Bernstam, who successfully exited two companies: Scribd and Parse

  • Robin Chan, an early Zynga and Notion employee, and founder of Operator

The topic of conversation was centered around one goal: how could we be prepared for the next wave of eCommerce disruption?

We knew we needed a technical leader that could help recruit and build the vision. The obvious choice was my former Reddit colleague, Saurabh Sharma, who built infrastructure that could handle >100M users to join as CTO.

The Evolution of eCommerce Channels

In eCommerce, the pandemic caused a Cambrian explosion of new shopping experiences. Overnight, almost every retail shopper moved their entire presence online. Companies realized the potential for capturing the new demand of online shoppers and started making more interesting ways for people to shop. Live streaming shopping, affiliate blogs, influencer shops, and more started gaining more traction. Over the course of a year, 60% of previous online shoppers who primarily shopped on large marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart moved to shop on other eCommerce experiences. There was also a watershed moment for Shopify, where merchants realized they didn’t have to be stuck in Amazon’s ecosystem and could now own their own infrastructure stack. Shopify gave merchants tools for inventory management, order fulfillment, and more interesting customer pricing models.

However, there became a clear disconnect between brands/merchants and the people and companies that sell their products. Merchants were handcuffed to either sell directly on Amazon or to use Facebook and Google ads to generate sales. The overall cost of this customer acquisition has increased by 222% in the last eight years and 41% in the last year alone. On the other side, platform developers had to sign up to bloated affiliate networks with limited product inventory to sell products or go through an inefficient process of creating contracts directly with brands.

Rye's Vision: Building an Open and Efficient eCommerce Network

After months of researching the market and talking to brands and sellers, my co-founders and I started to sketch together what the future of eCommerce should look like: an open and programmatic network that could hold the collection of all products — where any brand can plug in their inventory, and any seller could pull from. This network should allow sellers to spin up an eCommerce experience in minutes, similar to how Stripe enabled payments in minutes.

Benefits of Rye's Network for Shoppers, Merchants, and Developers

We believe this network will bring dramatic benefits to shoppers, merchants, and, most importantly, developers:

  • Shoppers will enjoy a seamless, unified shopping experience from product discovery to checkout. This means being able to pay for items from different stores or marketplaces in one cart, and without waiting to be redirected out of the platform.

  • Merchants will be able to list their inventory within our database and have way more efficient tools than what exists today, allowing them to: get higher-quality customer data, reduce cost to acquire new customers, and capture sales on emerging eCom channels.

  • Developers can now set up any platform with instant, unlimited access to the largest inventory of products.

Developing the Rye Platform: MVP and Future Plans

My co-founders and I established Rye in order to start deploying the building blocks of this network. We’ve spent the last year building an MVP of this product to showcase the value of how this could work and how it makes eCommerce way more efficient.

Core Features of Rye's API

  • Programmatic Checkout: First, we have developed a 1-click programmatic checkout that lets shoppers add their payment information right on the shopping experience instead of having to pay on a merchant’s website. This removes redirection to make checkouts frictionless.

  • Shopify & Amazon Business Product Data: Second, our API has the largest inventory of Shopify and Amazon product data. Developers can request an API key and search through our catalog for free, requesting data such as price, inventory counts, product variants, and more. In addition, Rye offers a search and recommendation engine that allows for a much more personalized product discovery experience.

Seed Funding and Rye’s Roadmap

We’re thrilled to announce that we have raised $14 million in Seed funding to help us build the next evolution of eCommerce. A16z led the round with support from its Cultural Leadership Fund and participation from Solana Ventures, GOAT Capital, L Catterton, Electric Ant, Electric Feel Ventures, Andre Iguodala, Javale McGee, and James Beshara. We’ll use the money to invest in our product and engineering teams to build out additional tools for developers and merchants.

So, what are we building next? Our core API already solves quite a few challenges that eCommerce developers face; however, the upcoming features on our roadmap will make selling products far easier. We’ll build out a unified checkout experience where shoppers can pay for items from different stores all in one cart. Finally, we’ll enable merchants to directly connect to the Rye API, which will unlock faster product data and an instant checkout experience.

We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along on Twitter @Rye and LinkedIn @Rye.

The Future of Rye: Decentralization and Community Engagement

Eventually, the Rye API will be fully decentralized, built on the Solana blockchain. To achieve this, we need to work with merchants and sellers directly and partner with developers in the community who understand our vision and want to build with us. We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along with our updates and to get early access / GitHub access, tweet us at @Rye and join our Discord.

Invitation to Collaborate and Career Opportunities at Rye

Also, if you’re interested in working with the core team, we’re hiring across a number of roles. You can apply here.

Introducing Rye

November 11, 2022

6 min

Arjun Bhargava

Co-founder and CEO, Rye.com

20% of retail transaction has shifted online from traditional channels and the sector is growing. Consumers are buying products in new, innovative ways. The economics of selling online has gotten way more complicated. And social commerce is on a massive uptrend. The mission of Rye is to lean into these changes and build the foundation for the next generation of eCommerce.

The Genesis of Rye: A Collaboration of Seasoned Entrepreneurs

Rye started with a text in early 2021 from Jamie Quint — a friend and former colleague at Reddit, who led its monetization efforts and, more recently, was Head of Growth at Notion. He wanted to know if I could hop on a Zoom with his friend and former co-founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, to “incubate a project idea we have.” It was a life-changing text for me: “Hell yea! I love what Justin’s built,” I responded.

When I joined that call, I was greeted by four amazing, seasoned entrepreneurs who would eventually become co-founders of Rye.

  • Justin Kan, who co-founded Twitch

  • Tikhon Bernstam, who successfully exited two companies: Scribd and Parse

  • Robin Chan, an early Zynga and Notion employee, and founder of Operator

The topic of conversation was centered around one goal: how could we be prepared for the next wave of eCommerce disruption?

We knew we needed a technical leader that could help recruit and build the vision. The obvious choice was my former Reddit colleague, Saurabh Sharma, who built infrastructure that could handle >100M users to join as CTO.

The Evolution of eCommerce Channels

In eCommerce, the pandemic caused a Cambrian explosion of new shopping experiences. Overnight, almost every retail shopper moved their entire presence online. Companies realized the potential for capturing the new demand of online shoppers and started making more interesting ways for people to shop. Live streaming shopping, affiliate blogs, influencer shops, and more started gaining more traction. Over the course of a year, 60% of previous online shoppers who primarily shopped on large marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart moved to shop on other eCommerce experiences. There was also a watershed moment for Shopify, where merchants realized they didn’t have to be stuck in Amazon’s ecosystem and could now own their own infrastructure stack. Shopify gave merchants tools for inventory management, order fulfillment, and more interesting customer pricing models.

However, there became a clear disconnect between brands/merchants and the people and companies that sell their products. Merchants were handcuffed to either sell directly on Amazon or to use Facebook and Google ads to generate sales. The overall cost of this customer acquisition has increased by 222% in the last eight years and 41% in the last year alone. On the other side, platform developers had to sign up to bloated affiliate networks with limited product inventory to sell products or go through an inefficient process of creating contracts directly with brands.

Rye's Vision: Building an Open and Efficient eCommerce Network

After months of researching the market and talking to brands and sellers, my co-founders and I started to sketch together what the future of eCommerce should look like: an open and programmatic network that could hold the collection of all products — where any brand can plug in their inventory, and any seller could pull from. This network should allow sellers to spin up an eCommerce experience in minutes, similar to how Stripe enabled payments in minutes.

Benefits of Rye's Network for Shoppers, Merchants, and Developers

We believe this network will bring dramatic benefits to shoppers, merchants, and, most importantly, developers:

  • Shoppers will enjoy a seamless, unified shopping experience from product discovery to checkout. This means being able to pay for items from different stores or marketplaces in one cart, and without waiting to be redirected out of the platform.

  • Merchants will be able to list their inventory within our database and have way more efficient tools than what exists today, allowing them to: get higher-quality customer data, reduce cost to acquire new customers, and capture sales on emerging eCom channels.

  • Developers can now set up any platform with instant, unlimited access to the largest inventory of products.

Developing the Rye Platform: MVP and Future Plans

My co-founders and I established Rye in order to start deploying the building blocks of this network. We’ve spent the last year building an MVP of this product to showcase the value of how this could work and how it makes eCommerce way more efficient.

Core Features of Rye's API

  • Programmatic Checkout: First, we have developed a 1-click programmatic checkout that lets shoppers add their payment information right on the shopping experience instead of having to pay on a merchant’s website. This removes redirection to make checkouts frictionless.

  • Shopify & Amazon Business Product Data: Second, our API has the largest inventory of Shopify and Amazon product data. Developers can request an API key and search through our catalog for free, requesting data such as price, inventory counts, product variants, and more. In addition, Rye offers a search and recommendation engine that allows for a much more personalized product discovery experience.

Seed Funding and Rye’s Roadmap

We’re thrilled to announce that we have raised $14 million in Seed funding to help us build the next evolution of eCommerce. A16z led the round with support from its Cultural Leadership Fund and participation from Solana Ventures, GOAT Capital, L Catterton, Electric Ant, Electric Feel Ventures, Andre Iguodala, Javale McGee, and James Beshara. We’ll use the money to invest in our product and engineering teams to build out additional tools for developers and merchants.

So, what are we building next? Our core API already solves quite a few challenges that eCommerce developers face; however, the upcoming features on our roadmap will make selling products far easier. We’ll build out a unified checkout experience where shoppers can pay for items from different stores all in one cart. Finally, we’ll enable merchants to directly connect to the Rye API, which will unlock faster product data and an instant checkout experience.

We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along on Twitter @Rye and LinkedIn @Rye.

The Future of Rye: Decentralization and Community Engagement

Eventually, the Rye API will be fully decentralized, built on the Solana blockchain. To achieve this, we need to work with merchants and sellers directly and partner with developers in the community who understand our vision and want to build with us. We’ve started by open-sourcing reference apps (like the Rye store builder) that use the API, which would allow anyone to spin up their own shopping experience in minutes.

Start building with Rye, sign up here.

Follow along with our updates and to get early access / GitHub access, tweet us at @Rye and join our Discord.

Invitation to Collaborate and Career Opportunities at Rye

Also, if you’re interested in working with the core team, we’re hiring across a number of roles. You can apply here.

Accelerate your commerce operations

Accelerate your commerce operations

Accelerate your commerce operations