Categorie: deals

With $1M+ From Guitar Hero Co-founder & Others, Zipongo Is Building The Mint.com For Healthy Living

deals, Fundings & Exits, groceries, Health, healthy living, mobile, social, Startups, TC, Zipongo

zipongoJason Langheier founded Zipongo in June 2011 to give families and parents an easier way to make healthier dietary choices by reducing the costs that so often get in the way. Through a web-based health community and iPhone app, Zipongo essentially combines the best of Mint.com and Groupon to create a service that gives users their own personalized wellness plans (and the ability to manage them), while offering discounts at the grocery stores they shop at the most.

To help it gear up for a full-scale launch later this summer (Zipongo is currently in private beta), the startup recently closed a round of seed capital ($1M+) from a flock of superangels and healthcare, tech and food marketing veterans. Those names include Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake via Founder Collective, Wireless Generation co-founder and CEO Larry Berger, Peter Dolan, the Director of The Partnership for a Healthy America (and former CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb) and Guitar Hero and Blue Goji co-founder Kai Huang — to name a few.

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Stealthy Startup Gumhouse Raises $6M+ For A “Social Stream Video Shopping Network”

deals, discounts, ecommerce, Fundings & Exits, gumhouse, shopping, social, Startups, TC

gumhouse-logoA somewhat stealthy new startup called Gumhouse just raised over $6 million according to this SEC filing, and there are some big names attached to the project, it seems. According to the Gumhouse.com website, the service is described as a “social stream video shopping network,” which uses Facebook to personalize your shopping experience. After a little digging, it appears the service has already soft launched.

Listed as “Directors” on the filing are LegalZoom, ShoeDazzle, and The Honest Company co-founder Brian Lee and former Photobucket Biz Dev VP and Color co-founder Peter Pham, who’s also at Science, the Betworks-like technology studio/incubator based in L.A. Meanwhile, “Executive Officers” include Tom Dare, former VP of Business Intelligence at MySpace and Mike Jones, both also of Science, and RxVantage co-founder Greg Gilman. Polaris Ventures General Partner, Jason Trevisan, is listed as a director, too.

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Social Passport Marries NFC With Social Media For A New Spin On Mobile Deals

deals, loyalty program, mobile, nfc, qr, social, Social Passport, Startups, TC

-1When it comes to daily deals and loyalty programs, local merchants are constantly bombarded with new options. Groupon has leapt ahead in daily deals, and there quite a few players in the loyalty program space, all trying various approaches to mobile, to rewarding influencers, to encouraging social engagement, gamification, and more.

New York-based Social Passport is taking a different approach to the problem by creating a social loyalty tool that leverages both NFC and QR codes to allow customers to interact with their favorite businesses in realtime and receive discounts, and, in turn, gives businesses access to a wider audience of potential customers through their users’ social media channels.

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