AUSTIN, TX – November 14, 2011 – BlackLocus, the leading cloud provider of automated pricing optimization and revenue management solutions for online retailers, today announced Austin as their headquarters and welcomes new additions to their team.
With recent graduation from the LaunchPad program at Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and funding from Texas Venture Firms DFJ Mercury and Silverton Partners, BlackLocus chose Austin for its headquarters because of the wealth of top talent in cloud-based application development, marketing and start-up operations.
We are excited to join the high tech community in Austin,” said Rodrigo Carvalho, co-founder and CEO of Black Locus. “We have been graciously welcomed. The technology companies here and the people behind them want to see others succeed. Everyone has been so helpful. It comes down to the networking, the resources and the top tier talent. Austin was our top pick.”
BlackLocus recently completed a round of new hires and will be looking to expand the team even more in Q1.
“Consumers are more sophisticated and pricing is more transparent than ever before – especially online,” said Morgan Flager, Partner at Silverton Partners. “BlackLocus helps retailers to succeed in this environment by allowing them to rapidly respond to their competitive environment and better understand how pricing effects conversion.”
Recent additions to the team include:
Rob Taylor, President & COO – Rob joins BlackLocus from TrueCar, a pricing confidence and auto-buying platform, where he built truecar.com from inception into a profitable, national brand that is reinventing how cars are bought and sold. He brings previous successes from social network QuePasa, and energy risk management solution PriceLock. Rob holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg MBA program and holds both a BS and Masters in Engineering.
Amanda McGuckin Hager, Director of Marketing – Amanda joins BlackLocus from SolarWinds, where she managed Marketing Programs for the inbound lead engine that is talked about on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. She has over 15 years of experience in Marketing with high-tech companies and is an expert in online lead generation, demand generation and customer advocacy.
Trebor Carpentor, Director of Engineering – Trebor joins BlackLocus from SmarteSoft, where he managed and oversaw product development for the suite of test automation products. With over 15 years of development and engineering, Trebor’s experience includes lead developer roles for Lombardi Software (since acquired by IBM), Tangoe, NetSpend and Apple.
The new hires join founders Rodrigo Carvalho, CEO, Lukas Bouvrie, CCO and Francisco Uribe, CTO, who formed the company while completing their business and computer science graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.
Working closely with industry experts and human-computer interaction researchers, BlackLocus has created an intuitive platform focused on solving tough problems for online retailers. Simply put, BlackLocus automatically scans the competitive landscape, and then presents to their customer which of their products are priced too low or too high, while recommending pricing that maximizes their profits.
BlackLocus offers powerful and affordable eCommerce Competitive Pricing Analysis to customers ranging from small businesses to those on the Internet Retailer 500 through an intuitive, cloud-based platform that delivers actionable recommendations on competitive pricing and positioning. Powered by collaboration with industry experts and human-computer interaction researchers, BlackLocus deploys sophisticated machine learning and revenue management techniques in a pricing-as-a-service model, enabling small and mid-sized online retailers to compete with larger and/or more established players. BlackLocus is headquartered in Austin, TX with offices in Pittsburgh, PA. For more information, please visit www.blacklocus.com.
Press Contact:
info@blacklocus.com
