Raj De Datta

Raj De Datta

Raj serves as co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach. Before launching the Company in 2009, Raj was entrepreneur-in-residence at Mohr-Davidow Ventures, served as Cisco’s director of product marketing, and was on the founding team of telecom company FirstMark Communications. He also worked in technology investment banking at Lazard Freres. Raj serves on the Council for Player Development for the US Tennis Association, as a Founder Partner at seed-stage venture capital firm Founder Collective and an individual investor in over 20 Silicon Valley start-ups. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering with a certificate in Public Policy and International affairs from Princeton University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.

AI is Bringing Conversation Back to Commerce

Even in its earliest form, commerce has always been centered around conversation. The evolution to e-commerce seemed to de-center that conversational element, though. Without a person to speak with, conversation was relegated to a single place within the online shopping experience: the search bar. As the only direct insight into what consumers really want, the…

You Understand What Your Customers Want. Does Your Search Engine?

Understanding what customers wanted was pretty simple in a physical store. They could tell a store associate, “I need a coat for a ski trip,” or simply point to an item to say, “I need something like that.” With the introduction of online shopping, the e-commerce search bar became the store associate. A customer simply…