Serena Williams’ early-stage venture fund led a $3 million round into Atlanta retail startup Lillii RNB Inc.
The investment comes more than a year after the company launched its Freeing Returns platform, which is a software that analyzes return data and detects fraudulent returns. Aperture Venture Capital co-led the round.
Williams, a professional tennis player who has won six U.S. Open titles, raised $111 million for her fund, Serena Ventures, last month. Her firm’s portfolio already features over 60 companies including Foody, Infinite Objects and nestcoin. More than half of the founders in the Serena Ventures portfolio are women and nearly half are Black, according to its website.
Lillii RNB, founded in 2013 by Barbara Jones-Brown, has spent most of its existence being a point-of-sale company helping retail stores integrate, customize or install their software that assists with transactions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the company lost 50% of its business due to store closures, and Jones-Brown realized that only relying on consulting was too volatile for a business model. That's when the company created Freeing Returns, which is based in the cloud and provides artificial intelligence-powered suggestions based on returns data, Jones-Brown said.
“Since a lot of retail is moving online, stores are noticing returns were going up and fraud was occurring,” Jones-Brown said. “The need for products like ours was becoming prevalent because retailers are looking for new, innovative solutions.”
The company plans to integrate its Freeing Returns platform with Salesforce's e-commerce platform. The investment funds will partly go toward that partnership.
In the past year, the company’s staff has grown from 10 consultants to 17, five of whom are Atlanta-based. The company looks to grow to a team of 27 by the end of the year, Jones-Brown said. The company has more than $1 million in revenue and expects to more than triple that by the end of the year, Jones-Brown said.
Her long-term is provide retailers with more automated solutions for vendor and customer interactions, such as inventory management and customization of customer needs.
