ShopLocket Raises $1 Million in Funding to Grow its Team and Power the Next Wave of E-commerce
Just three months ago, Toronto-based startupofficially launched in open beta with a goal to turn the traditional destination commerce model on its head.
Today, the company announced that it has raised $1 million in seed funding, led by Valar Ventures, the global investment vehicle backed by Peter Thiel that is making its first investment in a Canadian startup.
Other participants include Extreme Venture Partnersand a group of private investors.
“The funding will be used primarily to grow the team,” says ShopLocket CEO and co-founder Katherine Hague whose 22nd birthday is just a few days away. “We’ve been a team of three for the past four months, and will now be bringing on three to four new hires. We’re focused on serving our rapidly growing user base and are developing new features and improved flows to help our sellers be even more successful.”
ShopLocket, which recently graduated from the first cohort of Toronto-based accelerator Extreme Startups, has made selling online to fans and followers as easy as sharing a link or embedding a YouTube video. Sellers can simply share their products for purchase on popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any existing blog or website. There is no need to setup a storefront and sellers don’t have to submit their product to an unprofessional or expensive marketplace.
According to Hague, we’re about to experience a shift in the way consumers buy and sell products online. “E-commerce will no longer be reserved for marketplaces and storefronts. Instead products will find us; on blogs, websites, and in our newsfeeds — just as naturally as the videos and photos we share today,” she says.
To showcase the company’s evolution as a startup, ShopLocket has just launched an interactive timeline which highlights some of its major milestones. You can check it out here. Techvibes will be watching closely to see how the story unfolds.
