Soldsie is a social

eCommerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managemen ...

platform based in San Francisco, CA. Co-founders Chris Bennett (CEO) and Arrel Gray (CTO) met through the startup community of Silicon Valley in 2011. They officially launched Soldsie in May 2012 at a time when the viability of f-Commerce was still being questioned by the industry. The founders of Soldsie were able to show that Facebook commerce is a viable form of social commerce when it wasn’t just another tab on a retailer's Facebook page for users to click onto. Their social shopping platform allows businesses to monetize their social media pages through the use of comments, allowing brands to directly sell on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

and Instagram. Retailers looking at selling on Facebook or Instagram upload products according to a template that includes price and item description. They can then schedule campaigns, or sales of multiple items, that post at the designated time. Fans register through email and comment 'Sold' to trigger the purchasing process. The process is managed through a backend dashboard that compiles all the comments and then allows retailers to send invoices to buyers. Retailers can also turn on automatic invoices, track customers, and put buyers on a waitlist for out-of-stock items. This process allows businesses to turn their Facebook and Instagram pages into points of sale. Soldsie raised $1 million for its full seed round. In addition to raising $425,000 from 72 investors through FundersClub, Soldsie also received funding from

500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, Californ ...

and

e.ventures Headline, formerly e.ventures and BV Capital, is a global venture capital firm with an early-stage investment approach in the markets of Adtech, Commerce, Fintech, Media, Mobile and Software. It was founded in 1997 in Santa Barbara, California a ...

to close out its seed round. On May 15, 2014 it was announced that Soldsie had raised 4 million for their

Series A funding A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

. As of May 2014, Soldsie has processed over $25 million in transactions, representing an increase of threefold over 2013.

References

External links

Official Website
Electronic trading platforms Online retailers of the United States {{tech-company-stub