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Nectar Social co-founders and sisters: CEO Misbah Uraizee, sitting, and CTO Farah Uraizee. (Nectar Photo)
As everything gets more virtual, younger shoppers crave tangibility and personal engagement — or at least the perception of real interactions.
As my 16-year-old daughter explains it to me, they want something akin to the mall culture that I grew up with, roaming stores with friends and engaging with sales clerks.
“It’s that interpersonal connection,” she said, “where you’re way more likely to buy something if you have an actual rapport with somebody.”
Nectar Social, a new Seattle-area startup, wants to fill that void for shoppers — with an eye on Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
Founded in mid-2023 by sisters Misbah Uraizee and Farah Uraizee, Nectar is wielding the latest artificial intelligence technologies to help brands reach consumers where they’re hanging out on social media platforms and talking directly to them in personalized conversations to create those bonds.
The two founders have worked at multiple tech companies and simultaneously had jobs at Meta, in product management and engineering. They’re tapping those experiences for insights into social media engagement.
Funding and growth
Nectar Social is developing AI tech to help brands build interest from younger shoppers wherever they roam on social media. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
Soon after launching, Nectar raised a $2 million pre-seed round that was led by Seattle’s Flying Fish Ventures.
It has an engineering office in Bellevue, Wash., and is establishing a second hub in New York City that will target sales and marketing. The current headcount is 15, with six open roles. Nectar is still in stealth mode, but working with multiple brands.
The traditional approach of companies reaching shoppers through digital ads, emails and text messaging is expensive and not effective, the co-founders said.
The focus now, Misbah Uraizee said, is on “social commerce,” which she defines as a brand showing up on whatever social media platform its consumers are using and helping them discover products, making recommendations, entertaining them and building a relationship that leads to a sale.
The purchase might come directly after that first conversation or maybe a month later, she said, “because this consumer loves you so much … they’ve built a relationship.”
But does it still feel like an authentic connection even if you’re talking to a machine? My teen, at least, says yes.
She and her peers are tired of wading alone through overwhelming websites with a million options to wind up ordering items that don’t fit and don’t look they way they expected, she said, and if an AI assistant can smooth the way, that’s going to foster loyalty.
“[For] something like ChatGPT, we’ve moved away from having it feel impersonal because it’s so much of our reality,” she said, “even if it’s AI.”
Social platforms as storefronts
Nectar’s founders are trying to convince companies that this is the future.
“If brands aren’t adapting to this kind of new wave of consumer behavior, they’re going to lose access to that entire generation,” said Farah Uraizee. “They’re kind of missing out on this wave of social platforms now becoming the storefront.”
Shanghai-based SuperOrdinary, which is valued at $800 million, is perhaps most similar to Nectar in its marketing approach. Other related companies include Algolia, Rebuy and Loup.
Nectar’s leaders said they’re distinguishing themselves by providing data that demonstrates how the social commerce efforts are delivering results.
“If you look at the current landscape of tools and platforms out there for these businesses, there’s a big gap trying to bridge social commerce to engagement and vice versa, and measuring the ROI from that,” Misbah Uraizee said, adding, “that’s our core thesis.”
The 16-year-old sees promise on the shoppers’ side of the experience.
“If you can install something,” she said, “that makes teenagers or Gen Z generally feel satisfied with the product and satisfied with the company and feeling connected — I think a lot of clothing feels really impersonal especially with fast fashion — that is so much more compelling for my generation.”
