Referly, a San Francisco, CA-based shopping network where every product is hand picked by a community of social sellers, has raised $1m in seed funding.
According to reports, backers include Ignition Partners, New Enterprise Associates, 500 Startups, Matt Monahan, Eileen Burbidge, Jeff Lawson, Ullas Naik, Elliot Loh, Damien Tanner, Michael Liou, and Carter Rabasa.
The company intends to use the capital to hire new people (http://refer.ly/jobs) and scale up their solution.
Cofounded by CEO Danielle Morrill, CTO Kevin Morrill, and CDO Al Abut, Referly tracks the links users share, and rewards them for their friends’ actions. By sharing products and services, they build a reputation as the “go-to guru” for those things, and get rewards for generating purchases. Backed by Y Combinator, the company currently has about 10,000 users.
For sellers, Referly doesn’t require any up front investment in product inventory or a complex approvals process.
FinSMEs
16/10/2012