TheFind - Fashion Company Profile
TheFind was the Mountain View shopping search engine whose Product Ranking Engine crawled half a million stores to rank products by relevance, not payment - until Facebook acquired it on March 13, 2015, and shut it down in the same announcement.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Defunct - acquired by Facebook on March 13, 2015, and shut down; its team and technology were absorbed into Facebook's commerce advertising
- Type
- Was private - venture-backed (Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures; $26 million raised)
- Headquarters
- Mountain View, California, United States
- Founded
- 2006 (begun around 2005 as FatLens)
Company Profile
There is no TheFind to visit today: the service went offline within weeks of the Facebook acquisition, and no successor product carries its name, so this page carries neither a shop box nor an official-site button - the successor link in the disclaimer leads to the company that absorbed it. The profile is kept as the record of an honest experiment in shopping search: an index that ranked 500 million products by relevance and insisted its rankings could never be bought or sold.
The technology had a name of its own: the 'Product Ranking Engine.' It crawled over 500,000 stores to find, at the filing's date, over 150 million products web-wide - a figure that grew to some 500 million products by the end - and its rankings, the company insisted, could never be bought or sold. Large product images replaced the text-link wading: 'They take care of the science, so you can enjoy the art of shopping.' Fashion was a headline category, with dedicated shopping for women's, men's and children's fashion.
Nine Years of Shopping Search, Then Facebook: 2006-2015
TheFind was founded in Mountain View, California, in 2006 (begun as FatLens around 2005), and raised $26 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. Its personalization play, Glimpse, tied recommendations to a shopper's Facebook likes - a hint of where the company would end up. By its final year it claimed a billion shoppers helped and an index of 500 million products across half a million stores.
On March 13, 2015, Facebook acquired TheFind - and shut it down in the same announcement. Key members of the team joined Facebook to make its ads more relevant, applying the product-indexing technology to commerce advertising, and the search engine went offline within weeks. There is no successor service to link to; this profile is kept as the record of a shopping-search pioneer, and its disclaimer points to the acquirer that absorbed it.
Common Questions
What was TheFind?
A personalized shopping search engine from Mountain View, California, whose Product Ranking Engine crawled over 500,000 stores - 150 million products at the time of this profile, about 500 million by 2015 - and ranked results by relevance rather than paid placement.
What happened to TheFind?
Facebook acquired it on March 13, 2015, and shut the service down; key team members joined Facebook to improve the relevance of its commerce ads, and the search engine went offline within weeks.
When was TheFind founded?
In 2006 in Mountain View, California (begun around 2005 as FatLens). It raised $26 million from Lightspeed and Redpoint before the Facebook acquisition.
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