Editor’s note: Sunil Rajaraman is the co-founder and CEO of Scripted.com, a marketplace for businesses to create content at scale; Scripted has a pool of 80,000 freelance writers and 1,000 customers. Follow Sunil on Twitter @subes01. Like many others, I read the news about Zaarly, reported by TechCrunch’s Rip Empson last weekend, with some degree of shock. Zaarly is a well-funded… → Read More
After winning LA Startup Weekend, Zaarly almost immediately raised $1 million from a long list of notable investors (even “Steve jOBS”), and then raised $14 million more before the end of the year in a round led by Kleiner, while adding Meg Whitman to its board.
Fast forward to today and you’ll no longer find Zaarly’s marketplace on the Web. And, with the next update to its mobile app… → Read More
In the fall of 2011, we caught up with social commerce startup, Yardsellr, which the founders claimed at the time had grown into a community of over 5 million people. The Facebook-based social commerce platform was listing 6K new items for sale each day (at the time) and had over 120K items for sale in total. This, by the way, came after the company raised $5 million from Accel in 2010. → Read More
Last year, Zaarly launched its real-time mobile marketplace to connect users who need stuff done with those who will do it for them. But Zaarly is going beyond just making its platform available to all comers, and helping some of its top sellers create even more compelling marketplaces with the launch of Zaarly Storefronts.
Through Zaarly Storefronts, selected Zaarly sellers will now have a… → Read More
For many, the appeal of realtime, local commerce platforms like Zaarly is evident almost immediately. For those unfamiliar, the mobile-centric reverse Craigslist allows users to post requests to Zaarly’s app — for anything from data entry to a fancy Starbucks mocha Frappuccino and how much you would be willing to pay for it. As appealing as the idea may be initially, I must admit that I was… → Read More
The right investor, the kind who can help startups get over the inevitable “We’re Fucked It’s Over” (WFIO) moments, can turn a startup into a multi-billion dollar company.
The fact is that choosing the right investors, whether it be at the seed level or at a Series B or C stage is a life-changing decision for an entrepreneur and a startup. The wrong investor match could derail a startup. “It’s… → Read More
Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on… → Read More
Michael Arrington decided to test the limits of what his new Executive Assistant, Greg Barto, can actually do by asking the TechCrunch readers to suggest tasks he should complete for one day. Using Zaarly, Greg was sent on a day long adventure fulfilling tasks (risking his life and dignity?) offered up by the community and doing it all for charity. Luckily, it is all captured in the video below. → Read More
Many of you may know this, or may not, but Michael Arrington has an amazing new assistant, Greg Barto. Greg came to us from Hollywood and we have been kindly teaching him the ropes of TechCrunch and what to expect. However, we are not sure we prepared him for this.
Since Greg is somewhat new to San Francisco, he still doesn’t know the city that well. So, Mike has decided to give Greg a… → Read More
Another day, another startup security glitch.
This time the startup affected is Zaarly, the service that lets you buy or sell anything with people nearby.
A bug in a recent code push created a security hole that revealed phone numbers and private messages between buyers and sellers.
To exploit the bug, you’d need only access Zaarly’s listings.JSON file, specifying the lat and long… → Read More
For those not yet familiar with the peer-to-peer mobile startup, they’ve had a whirlwind year thus far. Built at hackathons and startup weekends over the first few months of this year, Zaarly took first prize at LA Startup Weekend in March, and soon thereafter raised a $1 million seed round from an impressive list of investors — Ashton Kutcher, Paul Buchheit, Lightbank, and TechCrunch founder … → Read More
In less than a month after its nationwide launch on May 14th, peer to peer marketplace Zaarly has crossed $1 million in posted transactions, and commemorated them with a colorful infographic depicting the break down of the early days of Zaarly.
Zaarly, which has raised more than $1 million in seed funding, boasts an impressive list of investors including Aydin Senkut‘s Felicis Ventures, SV… → Read More
While the idea of ‘online to offline’ for purchasing is proving to be powerful in the local commerce world, the trend of linking the physical world to the web is producing a number of startups that are innovating beyond just purchasing from local merchants or finding a product nearby. Many of the most interesting startups that have emerged over the past year or so are making our lives in the real… → Read More
Backed by an impressive list of investors, Zaarly, a web and mobile service that connects buyers and sellers in a localized market place, is launching to the public today.
As we’ve written in the past, Zaarly is a mobile-centric reverse Craigslist service. Here’s how Zarrly works. On the site or via the startup’s mobile apps, you post what you’re looking for (i.e. cupcakes), how much you’re… → Read More
Many years ago, after graduating college, I came home before moving to NYC, wondering how I would scrounge together the money for the first month’s rent and security deposit so my friends and I could all live together in the Big Apple. I had one month to get the cash, and instead of going out for traditional, hourly-wage work, I decided to go through all of my old stuff and throw it on eBay. In… → Read More
If you’re like most people at SXSW the time change today and the drinking last night has hit you like a iron hammer. Well luckily Zaarly, the much buzzed about HTML 5 mobile app that connects buyers and sellers in a localized market place, is now live today in Austin. So if you’re stuck in bed needing Gatorade and Advil (or a change of clothes, or an iPhone charger, or …) you can now hit up … → Read More
Zaarly was little more than an idea when it won a LA Startup Weekend competition three weeks ago. But there’s been so much buzz about the startup that they’ve now gathered thousands of beta requests. And they’ve closed a $1 million funding round from top tier investors.
Those investors include Ashton Kutcher, Felicis Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Bill Lee, Naval Ravikant and Lightbank (the venture… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
