A startup that has raised $75 million to help retailers gather data about their web visitors explains how the company functions like a local coffee shop

• Behavioral marketing company BounceX is focused on helping retailers know more about their web visitors.
• The company creates millions of rudimentary profiles of web visitors to provide retailers like Sears and Kate Spade with more information about consumer shopping habits.
• When asked about how BounceX's system functions in terms of privacy, AVP of marketing Kris Mobayeni explained it in terms of a local coffee shop barista who begins to recognize a regular customer.
• "Like, they might not know your name, they definitely don't know where you live or anything sensitive about you, but they recognize you enough to associate you with things you've done in the past and things you like," Mobayeni told Business Insider.
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PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - Like many companies focused on consumer behavior, BounceX thinks a lot about data privacy.

According to the startup's CEO Ryan Urban, the behavioral marketing company has been privacy-first since he cofounded it in 2012.

"We've been on the right side of history the whole time," BounceX CEO Ryan Urban told Business Insider during an interview at the eTail West conference in Palm Springs, California.

BounceX helps retailers uncover unknown web users on their websites, creating rudimentary profiles of visitors to provide retailers with more information about their shopping habits.

The startup, which has raised more than $75 million in funding to date and recently hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue, has helped retailers like Sears and Kate Spade understand their visitors more deeply, providing them with the tools to send tailored emails and messages to specific shoppers.

For example, brands can target smaller subsets of shoppers with customized email offers as opposed to a mass blast to all subscribers. Only details on the users' shopping habits are important for this type of product.

"We've never kept any personal information on any customer because we don't need it," Urban said. "All we need is that encrypted version of that identifier."

BounceX's AVP of marketing Kris Mobayeni explained the system in terms of a local coffee shop barista who begins to recognize a regular customer.

"The easiest way to think about it is if you're a regular at a coffee shop and you go to it every single morning, eventually a good barista recognizes you when you walk in," Mobayeni said. "It's like, 'Oh, this is the person who always orders a latte.'"

Mobayeni explained that in this analogy, the barista might not know the customer's name, where they live, or any other sensitive information about them. But, like BounceX, they can still predict what that person will order.

In 2017, Business Insider reported that BounceX had created digital profiles on 200 million people.

"It's nothing personal," Mobayeni said.