Flubit exits ‘messy group-buying’ space, raises $1.75m for e-commerce pivot

Last year, Flubit launched as yet another group-buying site.

Today, the would-be Groupon rival is announcing that it has secured $1.75 million in financing to pivot, which in case you hadn’t heard, is startup lingo for ‘we failed at this one thing so we will now be doing this other thing’.

In this case, it’s changing course to “build a platform capable of permanently changing online shopping”, according to Flubit CEO and founder Bertie Stephens.

The investment, which values the company at $9.3 million, will serve to relaunch the site under a different model later this summer.

“If there’s one thing we learned from our early beta months, it’s that flash sale sites are messy”, says Stephens, “as well as being made up of a lot of offers on things people aren’t really looking for. I don’t know about you, but there’s only so many discount pedicures and USB cables someone like me can use”.

True words, true words.

So what’s the revolutionary new model?

On the Flubit platform, customers simply provide the name of the product they want, the website with the best price they could find, and their email address. There is no product searching, no deals being pushed.

Users just tell Flubit what they want, and a short while later, Flubit creates a unique offer for them for that exact product.

Can’t wait to flub it.