CartsGuru and 42 Silicon Valley

CASE STUDY

ABANDONED CART RECOVERY: RETARGETING SOLUTION TO BRING

ONLINE SHOPPERS BACK TO CHECKOUT

According to a 2016 report released by eMarketer, global e-commerce sales are around $22.049 trillion and are estimated to exceed $27 trillion by 2020. The Baymard Institute found, by calculating the average of 34 different studies, that 68.81% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Business Insider estimates that online retailers will lose $4.6 trillion worth of merchandise when customers abandon their carts, and the issue that has a lot of room for opportunity to recover some of these losses, “about 60% of that is potentially recoverable by savvy online retailers, according to BI Intelligence estimates. Recoverable sales equate to an estimated $2.75 trillion.” There are now retargeting solution options out there to assist online retailers with cart recovery.  Business Insider revealed some of the retargeting solutions that can boost online retail sales, “To recoup these sales, merchants in part need to examine email retargeting strategies, app development, and the prioritization of establishing repeat customers. Merchants that effectively manage their abandoned shopping carts can bolster sales growth and gain a competitive edge in the e-commerce market.” Retargeting solutions is a complex effort that involves a lot of analysis, marketing, and outreach, so it is important for online retailers to work with a company that is skilled at cart recovery.

CARTS GURU: A SMART SOLUTION FOR ABANDONED ONLINE SHOPPING CART RECOVERY

Carts Guru is the #1 smart & multichannel retargeting solution for abandoned cart recovery in eCommerce. Maxime Pruvost, Founder, and CTO of Carts Guru created his first startup when he was just 19 and while studying Computer Science in France. By the time he graduated with his Master’s, he had successfully co-founded 2 companies. Maxime moved from France to San Francisco three years ago to develop Carts Guru in the heart of Silicon Valley. Carts Guru was created to provide a smart and easy solution to help eCommerce convert their lost customers while providing a great shopping experience. “Carts Guru is the all-in-one solution for smart and personalized cart abandonment recovery. Emails, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Ads and Automatic Calls combined, can convert more than 20% of lost customers into sales.”The company has started to celebrate a lot of growth, and right now they have around 50 employees in San Francisco and Barcelona, with plans to open an office in Los Angeles in September. There are around 20 employees in San Francisco and are actively hiring to keep up with Carts Guru’s rapid growth.

THE CHALLENGE: FINDING EMPLOYEES WHO ARE MOTIVATED TO LEARN

Carts Guru is a mid-level startup that offers a lot of potential growth to their employees. Maxime shared that Carts Guru is looking for motivated people who really want to learn and that it is rewarding to see how motivated employees evolve every month with soft skills such as communication and collaboration and hard skills such as expanding one’s knowledge about different programming languages and technology. This type of mindset creates a lot of opportunity and growth for Carts Guru and they are always looking for people who will thrive in their fast-paced environment. Maxime first heard about 42 Silicon Valley through its Paris campus. Carts Guru already had five people from 42 Paris on their team, so when their CTO heard that they were opening a location in the United States, they already knew what to expect from 42 Silicon Valley alumni.

Maxime knew there were specific and unique attributes about 42 that produce great potential hires,  “I knew that it is dis-ruptive, it is free, it is more flexible, and I like how you get to work on your own projects and face your own responsibil-ities. I believe that 42 is ready for the future. When people succeed in the 42 program, it is great, it is easy for them to learn new types of technologies because they need to chal-lenge themselves all the time.” Maxime shared how he be-lieves that this is part of the “DNA of 42,” to make people responsible, and he realizes that this brings great value to any company that is focused on growth. Maxime posted in-ternship opportunities on the 42 Silicon Valley internal web-site, and Leo Petit, Eugenio Rodriguez, Edouard Couderc and Peter Luu started working at Carts Guru as interns and they continued to stay on and work as full-time employees.

THE DECISION: HIRING 42 SILICON VALLEY ALUMNI

Maxime shared that the 42 alumni that Carts Guru has hired are contributing and taking on a big part of the project, “we take things step-by-step, there is a small amount of time to onboard a project and very quickly we have people who have the right way of working, and working at a company with specific issues, it is a great value for us to have people around like that.” Maxime said that he would consider hiring more 42 Silicon Valley students in the future. Carts Guru is committed to giving their junior employees the skills they need to continue learning from a mixture of motivated senior and other junior employees. Maxime has observed the way that 42 alumni work, and realizes that as a company that is growing quickly, it is important to include people who bring new energy and fresh ideas, “This is a good mixture and combination in a company that is growing fast because they have to take responsibility, so it is good to have interns and junior people in the company. And I also like to have people who are eager to learn because I always take some time to invest in them. 42 alumni bring great energy and can have a great impact at Carts Guru.”

RESULTS: 42 SILICON VALLEY PRODUCES EMPLOYEES THAT CAN CONTRIBUTE AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY