Chippmunk Raises $750,000 in Seed Funding for Scaling & Product Development
Savings search engine Chippmunk, that helps consumers to instantly find great deals online has raised $750,000 seed round as the peak holiday shopping season intensifies.
The seed round was led by investments from Richard Chino, a key early member of GoTo.com and Smarter.com; Dan Murray, CFO of Machinima; Derek Draper of Wildfire by Google; Nikhil Srivastava of KKR; Angel Investor Andrew Schwartz and other angles from LA and Silicon Valley.
750,000 for Scaling & Product development
Delighted about the $750,000 seed round Chippmunk CEO Brian Nickerson said, “Our passion and commitment to incomparable UX is at the core of what drives our team and we will continue scaling and investing in the product.”
Where other deal and coupon sites have run their course by confusing consumers with tricks, Chippmunk boasts of a clean, consumer friendly experience to help people quickly and easily compare deals. In Q4 consumers saved more than $25 per transaction on average and its Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales performed three times better than the industry average, driving 250 percent increase in additional retailer sales.
Doubling user base & top-tier clients
The firm also reports that partnerships span 25 categories with more than 600 leading brands including Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Sephora, Nordstrom, Pier 1 Imports, Red Envelope, Harry and David, Wayfair and the GAP and its user base has doubled every 2 months since launch.
“I’m confident in the team’s ability to execute. Their deep, direct domain experience has already proven valuable as they capitalize on the 2013 holiday shopping season,” said Chino.
Blogger Rewards Program
Apart from the seed round, Chippmunk also launched in beta its Blogger Rewards Program, which will see content creators increase monetization by providing coupons to their loyal audience members under a revenue sharing model.
“Our Blogger Rewards Program stemmed from our intimate understanding and passion for both online shopping and blogs,” says Co-Founder and Head of Product Samira Mahjoub Tapia. “We’re fairly compensating our content creators while unlocking additional distribution channels for our retailers. Bloggers have been extremely receptive to working with us because of our quality product, and the Rewards Program is another way for us to foster those relationships. It’s a win-win.”
Smart, spam-free coupon search
Launched in September 2013, Chippmunk helps shoppers select the best deals using its comparison shopping tools, rich filter search and Expert Shopper recommendations and being built on CouponRank algorithm, the platform offers smart, spam-free coupon search.
In just its three months after its launch Chippmunk has driven $5 million in sales to top-tier retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Sephora, Nordstrom, Pier 1 Imports, Red Envelope, Harry and David, Wayfair and the GAP.
