Curebit | Social Shopping, Virtually!
“Social Commerce excites me – we already know how powerful recommendations from friends can be and the group shopping experience can easily be replicated through social commerce. If I like a pair of trainers on a retailer’s website then my friend can see what I want and click on the product to buy straight away, without us having to be in the same place at the same time – the potential here is huge”
Sophy Silver – Int. PR Facebook
As the world becomes increasingly more social entrepreneurs are figuring ways to add that layer to current industries. Businesses achieve a new level of popularity because of Yelp and many other recommendation engines. With popularity revenues increase and lines form at the door. The question, why can’t you replicate this for e-commerce sites? This is the fundamental problem Curebit.com is trying to solve. Create conversations about products you love and get rewarded. This will increase traffic and revenue for the underlying e-commerce site.
What makes Curebit.com so impressive is not only the service they provide but also the story of it’s founders. Founders Allan Grant, Nori Yoshida and Jeff Yee met in April of last year at Founder Dating, a site that brings together talented people to form companies. These were not three rag tag guys trying to create something out of the scope of their talents. Each one has a very impressive resume for startup success. Nori Yoshida graduated with a BA and Masters from MIT and founded Devhood and CrispyNews which he sold to Microsoft and Salesforce respectively. Jeff Yee founded Browsera and worked at Microsoft prior to Curebit. I had the opportunity to talk to Allan Grant, the third founder, that started Webmasters International while still at Georgia Tech.
Allan shared the rest of the founder’s story. After the initial meeting they launched a small app they built in 12 hours that was nothing more than a litmus test to see their ability to work together. Shortly after all three moved into a house they rented in Berkeley away from their wives and lives and started working on an idea they had not yet envisioned. They knew there was something special about the team, but lacked a solid idea to put this newfound partnership toward.
The idea of Curebit.com came at TCDisrupt. Many new applications and services were rewarding current customers but not rewarding anyone else. As Jeff Yee put it in the original pitch:
“Companies reward Coke drinkers for being Coke drinkers, but what about incentivizing Pepsi drinkers to drink Coke? Allow your friends that are Coke drinkers to share with you a discount of reward to drink Coke with them.”
So in October Curebit.com was built and they began to proof the concept. Their goal is to increase sales of online stores through recommendations and social sharing. It is a perfect melding of social media and e-commerce. I can receive the same benefit as my friends without actually having to be with them shopping.
Since October, Curebit.com continues to grow. They have signed on many new companies and received sme level of funding but wont discuss the details.
The real impressive part of Curebit.com’s service remains hidden in the back end of the application. As an Economics major myself, looking at Curebit.com is like looking at a Game Theory Econ case study. The data set that will be created from this application will allow marketers, advertisers and e-commerce owners to hone in on exactly the right offering, demographic and product to reward. Curebit.com will be able to extract customer tendency and the elasticity of demand providing the optimal deal threshold for optimal results. Essentially they will be able to answer, who and why people share what?
Do you own an e-commerce store? Is this a service you would consider adding to your site?
