Soldsie is a social

eCommerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile comm ...

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 a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

. 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 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 is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in excha ...

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

References

External links

Official Website

Influencer Marketing Agency
Electronic trading platforms Online retailers of the United States {{tech-company-stub