Become scored a big Series C. The profitable (since Oct/Nov of 2007) shopping engine raised $17.5MM from TPG Growth, an investment arm of Texas Pacific Group (TPG) with about $2.5BB under management. Taek Kwon, Operating Partner @ TPG Growth will join the Board. Taek was one of the founders of Hotwire and then worked at InterActive Corp (Citysearch) for 6 years before briefly becoming the CEO of Friendster. Here’s the press release.

Become previously raised $7.2MM in its Series B from TransCosmos and $4.5MM in its Series A from its founders plus a couple Angels (Ron Conway). That puts the total funding raised at just over $29MM. TransCosmos did not participate in this round of financing.

So what does Become do with the fresh infusion of cash? Well the obvious answer is grow the business and take on the big boys - NexTag, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Google Product Search, and Yahoo! Shopping.

I spoke with Michael Yang, CEO of Become, about the funding. He wasn’t as open as he usually is, so here are just a couple snipets:

Why TPG Growth? I know of them as a PE firm…
“TPG has a lot of expertise in retail and technology. They have invested in Travelocity, Neiman Marcus, and Petco so they understand the opportunities available in online retail. Also, they had the right global footprint.”

What will the money be used for?
“We’re not announcing some of the new business initiatives that we’re looking at. We’re going to strengthen our core comparison shopping business as well as our core search technology to go into new verticals. We have developed powerful capabilities using our search engine. We’re also going to invest in our SEM platform.”

It’s a crowded market. Why did TPG Growth invest?
“TPG saw strong core technology as part of the DNA. Our core search tech allows us to crawl the web – over 5BB pages – we not only offer comparison shopping, but research on the best products to purchase. We’re also leveraging our core search technology in SEM efforts. We have a powerful SEM platform – we have an enormous volume of information about products on the web.” [This can be used for keyword generation, automated bidding, global optimization - we look at our SEM campaign on a portfolio level.]

“Another thing that TPG Growth saw is that comparison shopping is still a huge opportunity. The market is still growing at 30%/yr.”

You sold MySimon to CNET for $700MM. What’s different now?
“There’s a lot more opportunity in the core product - search algorithm opportunities that better match results to search queries, better user experience and better monetization opportunities. There are also a lot more ways to access the traffic, like syndication partnerships. Our partnership with WashingtonPost.com is a good example. Comparison shopping engines today are so much better: the search algorithm, better user generated content, more user generated content, better content from the merchants, social shopping (we introduced shopping lists). Comparison shopping engines have become a lot better than they were 10yrs ago, but it’s still early.”

So what’s the exit? Google, Yahoo! and IAC all own shopping engines…
“Our goal is to build a great business that’s built to last and become one of the top shopping engines. The exit will take care of itself – whether it’s an IPO or a partnership.”

So here’s my read:
-It’s really tough being an under-capitalized business, so it makes sense to raise $17.5MM…especially with the current market condition
-After paring back a bit in terms of headcount, I’d expect Become to bulk up again
-Become will get a lot more aggressive in terms of PPC buying
-Become will get a lot more aggressive in terms of partnerships
-While Michael says Become will move into other verticals, I think its main focus and core money-maker will be comparison shopping for a long time. Become tried being something other than a comparison shopping engine for a while (pushing it’s crawled listings of product reviews and buying guides), but it took a focus on comparison shopping to become profitable.
-With this money, Become can afford to get sidestracked a bit, but not too much. I’d expect Become to go into related verticals that some of the other shopping engines are participating in. Think Lead gen services like local, online education, travel, and lending.
-The exit is going to be tough. Google, Yahoo, and IAC all own shopping engines. That leaves Microsoft, but obviously Microsoft is going to have its hands full for a while.