BlueOcean Raises $30M to Solve the Problem of Using Gut Instinct to Make Brand Decisions

Co-written by CEO Grant McDougall, COO/President Liza Nebel, Chief Technology Officer Mike Semick and Chief Data Scientist Matthew Gross

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s just how fast and unexpectedly the world can change. Between the Great Resignation, supply chain shocks, and a seemingly never-ending cascade of global crises, it feels like there is no such thing as “business as usual” anymore.

Now more than ever, your brand has become everything and in the world of brand building everything has moved from the desk of the CMO to the board room. Many have woken up to this fact, and it’s why the demand for our platform has skyrocketed. We’re now tracking 6,000+ companies and working with some of the world’s most important brands representing over $18T in market value, like Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon and Diageo.?

With our growth has come more excitement and energy from our partners. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised a $30M Series B led by Insight Partners – who have deeply understood BlueOcean’s mission from the beginning – and with participation from FJ Labs, a champion of consumer brands, to further scale our vision.?

Brand is Everyone’s Business?

Having been on the agency side and in-house for 50+ years collectively, we saw the sheer amount of waste and the reliance on gut instinct that went into decision making.?

We created BlueOcean so that we could not only speed up the decision-making process using AI, but also offer leadership teams access to always-on insights about their brand health and competitive positioning.?

By taking this approach, we help brands:?

1. Prevent the loss of market share due to a lack of timely competitive insights
2. Focus teams on what matters and reduce the time/spend/brainpower on the wrong activities?
3. Get to market faster with informed ideas
4. Have the confidence to make informed decisions about what to -- or not to do -- next and convey business outcomes immediately?

The best part? We’ve made it happen 26X faster and at a fraction of the cost.?

We cannot express our gratitude to our team, who are passionately building BlueOcean alongside us, and the companies who entrust us with their most valuable asset, their brand.?

We’re hiring across all teams (apply here!), and if we can help you with your brand, we’d love to talk (URL link to request a meeting).

-- Grant, Liza, Mike and Matt??