Airbrite, a Y Combinator-backed e-commerce startup, is debuting its first product today called Celery (its name a play on the world “sell”). Celery is designed to be a “pre-commerce” store builder – or, in other words, it allows anyone to start selling ahead of having a product to ship. That means sellers can start taking credit cards now, then charge when their… → Read More
An online retailer platform called simply “42” is debuting today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY with new ideas about how to bring the intelligence of online e-commerce tools to brick-and-mortar merchants. The B2B platform provides businesses and brands a way to better connect and personalize their interactions with customers, as well as to gain broader insight into consumer buying patterns… → Read More
Centzy, a local search startup which is putting prices, store hours, ratings and specials for convenience-oriented businesses online, is today announcing $1.6 million in seed funding from Cowboy Ventures, Founder Collective, Lightbank, ff Venture Capital, and strategic angels found on AngelList. → Read More
Belly, the Chicago-based loyalty platform which has now grown to over 4,000 merchants across the U.S., is today announcing its first product outside of loyalty, with the official debut of Belly Bites, a sampling program designed to attract new customers to a local business. Thanks to Belly’s traction with its merchant customers, it’s able to tap into its growing collection of consumer data in… → Read More
Pretty Penny is a newly launched couponing startup, targeting a young, female audience – specifically the fashionistas and professionals who do a lot of their shopping online. The company, currently operating in bootstrap mode, offers its users a browser add-on that identifies the retail website a user is visiting, searches for relevant coupons and offers, and then presents those in a clean and… → Read More
Online and mobile digital cash network Dwolla is breaking down one of the barriers to entry to using its service with today’s introduction of a new “guest checkout” feature for online merchants. The option will allow non-Dwolla users to pay with Dwolla on e-commerce websites, possibly even getting a discount on the item or service being purchased in the process. → Read More
Capillary Technologies, a social CRM company that helps retailers engage over mobile, email, social and in-store channels, is announcing the close of $15.5 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners with Qualcomm Ventures also participating in the round. The company, which offers a cloud-based SaaS platform for customer engagement, clienteling, loyalty and… → Read More
Mobile payments platform Dwolla has the potential to disrupt how money moves in the new, digital economy. It’s an idea of how a payments network should look, if one had been built today, as opposed to tacking on digital payments to the legacy system that is the current credit card network. But there has been one big problem for end users of Dwolla – no one had any clue where they could actually… → Read More
Cartera Commerce, the largest provider of card-linked offers in the U.S., has just raised an additional $12.2 million in Series D funding, bringing its total raise to date to $43 million. The new round was led by Comvest Group, and included participation from all Cartera’s previous investors: Dace Ventures, Flybridge Capital, LBO Enterprises and Venture Capital Development Fund of New… → Read More
Apple’s Siri has been transforming how people interact with their phones. It taught us that it’s not just OK to talk to our phones, but that, in many cases, it’s actually a more useful way to get things done. Along those same lines, a company called Saygent is launching a mobile feedback solution which developers can insert into their application to collect feedback from the app’s users. → Read More
Amid the increased speculation surrounding Silicon Valley darling Pinterest’s forthcoming revenue model, competitor Fancy, a social photo-clipping service popular among the style-conscious set, has been quietly working on revenue ideas of its own. Previously, the service was doling out coupon code to users who “fancy’d” images belonging to specific merchants, but today, the site is diving… → Read More
Proximiant just launched a new service that provides digital receipts to customers of brick-and-mortar merchants. Like Square, the service involves the use of a low-cost hardware dongle that’s given away for free. But unlike Square, Proximiant leverages NFC (near field communication) to send the receipt from the cash register to the mobile phone. → Read More
A new startup called Euclid Elements emerged from stealth mode today to debut its customer-tracking solution for brick-and-mortar merchants it’s calling “Google Analytics for the physical world.” The name is an apt description for the new solution, which employs sensors and wireless technology to track customer behavior, as its founding team actually includes former Google Analytics… → Read More
Tagtile is a new company (and recent TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley participant), which is using the Square model involving free hardware to address the issues surrounding customer loyalty, management and rewards for brick-and-mortar merchants.
Like mobile payments service Square, which uses a free hardware dongle that attaches to a mobile phone, Tagtile also provides its merchants with a… → Read More
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