Savings search engine startup Chippmunk closed its seed funding round with $750,000. Launched three months ago, the Los Angeles-based firm provides a platform that aggregates and ranks online coupons in popular shopping categories, enabling consumers to automatically discover the best places for online deals. Chippmunk said their platform is built on the CouponRank algorithm and provides smart and spam-free coupon search.
The company's seed round was participated by angel investors from Los Angeles and Silicon Valley with vast internet expertise in the fields of search, social promotions, content or video publishing and ecommerce. The seed round was led by GoTo.com and Smarter.com key early member Richard Chino, Machinima CFO Dan Murray, Wildfire by Google's Derek Draper, KKR's Nikhil Srivastava and angel investor Andrew Schwartz.
Chippmunk Chief Executive Officer Brian Nickerson said the ease of use in their platform is what differentiates their company from others. He said in a statement, "Where other deal and coupon sites have run their course by confusing consumers with tricks, Chippmunk provides a clean, consumer friendly experience to help people quickly and easily compare deals. 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."
Chippmunk said their savings search engine has drive over $5 million in sales for retailers, while consumers were able to save an average of over $25 per transaction in the fourth quarter. Sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday also performed three times better than the average of the industry. The search engine also has partnerships that span 25 categories with over 600 leading brands that include Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Sephora, Pier 1 Imports, Nordstrom, Red Envelope, GAP, Harry and David and Wayfair.
Chino said about the investment, "The Chippmunk team has demonstrated that they can build a scalable, useful product for consumers while engaging with top retail brands and generating revenue. 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."
Join the Conversation