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Chippmunk, a savings search engine that helps consumers instantly discover where to shop and find the best online deals, has closed its seed funding round of $750,000 during the peak holiday shopping season.
Chippmunk is a highly curated, one-stop savings search engine that distinguishes itself with budget-driven features such as comparison shopping, rich filter search and Expert Shopper recommendations. The Chippmunk platform is built on the CouponRank algorithm and offers smart, spam-free coupon search. The site is mobile-optimized, socially integrated and free of plug-ins or device constraints.
Ease of use is what sets Chippmunk apart, CEO Brian Nickerson says. "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," he says. "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 Bootstrapping Stats:
- The savings search engine has driven more than $5 million in sales for retailers
- In Q4 consumers saved more than $25 per transaction on average
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales performed three times better than the industry average, driving 250 percent increase in additional retailer sales
- 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
- Chippmunk's user base has doubled every 2 months since launch
The seed round is comprised primarily of Los Angeles and Silicon Valley-based angel investors with vast internet expertise spanning search, content/video publishing, social promotions and e-commerce. The round is 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 others. "The Chippmunk team has demonstrated that they can build a scalable, useful product for consumers while engaging with top retail brands and generating revenue," Chino says. "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."
In addition to announcing its seed round, Chippmunk is launching a beta version of its Blogger Rewards Program, which helps 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."
