Ecommerce
CEO
Rob Solomon
Founded
2021
Co-Founders
N/A
Co-Investors
Blackstone

Kite, founded in 2021 by CEO Rob Solomon and Juxtapose, was a next-generation commerce company specializing in scaling small, high-potential brands in partnership with ambitious entrepreneurs. The business was founded on the premise that creating radical efficiencies across a product’s commerce journey is the path to unlocking its greatest potential. As a platform build, and with the support of both Juxtapose and Blackstone, the Company purchased and integrated ecommerce brands to its platform, while also ambitiously investing in deep ecommerce infrastructure and technology capabilities to give its brands a leg up in the competitive ecosystem. Kite created a new “every channel” commerce platform to help these businesses reach customers across ecommerce, social, retail, and more, as well as leveraged AI and the API economy to build a modern technology stack for manufacturing, supply chain, design, and customer acquisition excellence at scale.

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founding CEO

Rob Solomon

Rob founded Kite after serving as Chairman and CEO of GoFundMe. Earlier in his career, Rob led Groupon as COO and President, and served in a number of leadership roles in technology companies including Yahoo and Electronic Arts.

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Rob Solomon

“Creating extreme efficiencies across a product’s commerce journey is the path to unlocking its greatest potential. By building Kite I get the chance to reimagine how products are made, moved, stored, shipped, and sold—at scale. I believe consumer-facing commerce is in the early innings of a meaningful revolution and am excited to play a part in this trillion dollar market.”

Company
Kite
Year Founded
2021
Industry
Ecommerce
Designing the "everywhere" commerce platform of the future

We partnered with Rob to build and launch Kite, a commerce platform that leverages modern AI technologies to scale digital-first, high-potential product brands. Kite is reimagining how products are made, moved, stored, shipped and sold, with the goal of driving greater efficiencies at each stage of their growth. Kite's ambitious, long-term approach to empowering brands equips founders with capital, operational resources, and technology to accelerate the growth of their businesses. The company, with the support of Juxtapose and Blackstone, will initially focus on investing in and acquiring high-quality brands that help people invest in personal growth, nurture the people, pets, and places they cherish, and equip themselves for life’s everyday adventures. Rob's extensive experience as an operator - most recently the CEO and Chairman of GoFundMe (a $15B GMV business backed by Accel and TCV), and prior to that the President and COO of Groupon - positions him well to impact both the consumer and back-end complexity of the opportunity.

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Rob before Kite

Being able to transform a customer journey, and delight millions with superlative products and experiences, has motivated me since the earliest days of career. I joined Electronics Arts to help with their gaming platforms before the Internet was a thing, and then led Yahoo's shopping efforts when it was the largest site in the world (and before mobile was a thing). Before joining forces with Juxtapose and Blackstone in the creation of Kite Brands, I have spent my time honing the strategic and leadership experiences that allow customer passion to scale globally, including President, COO, and Board Member stints at transformative businesses such as GoFundMe, Groupon, and HomeAway. As an avid consumer of all things new, I remain passionate about finding opportunities to not only transform the world for the better, but to put smiles on the faces of consumers worldwide.

Career Highlights

2015

Joined GoFundMe as CEO and Chairman. At GoFundMe, Rob scaled the business from $2 billion in donations raised to over $15 billion coming from 100M+ donors globally.

2010

As Groupon's first President & COO, Rob expanded the company's services to more than 40 countries, grew sales from $100M to over $2.5B, and hired 7,500 employees worldwide.

2009

Joined HomeAway (NASDAQ: AWAY) as an active independent public company board member. Continued to build operating, strategic, and finanicial exposure to building complex and sophisticated global consumer platforms.

2000

In the midst of the dotCom rise and bubble burst, built out the commerce and shopping channels of Yahoo, which was then the most visited website on the Internet.

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