After several weeks of hype-building, name-your-price crowd-commerce startup Zaarly began publicly operating today. The company came together when co-founders Bo Fishback, Eric Koester and Ian Hunter won a Startup Weekend competition in Los Angeles. Here’s how it works: A consumer posts an offer to Zaarly, either through its website or a mobile app, naming a price for something they want. So, for instance, you could say you’d pay $5 for a Top Pot doughnut—and see if someone else monitoring the site will fulfill the request. According to this YouTube video, that deal apparently actually went down today in Seattle. Zaarly has financing from investors including actor Ashton Kutcher, Felicis Ventures, and Lightbank.
Author: Curt Woodward
Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft.
Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem.
A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.
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