Chicago-based ShipBob plans to expand into its second market outside the Windy City, and it's using a new round of funding to help grow its young shipping business.
Y Combinator-backed ShipBob landed a $1 million seed round thanks to SV Angels, Funders Club, WeFunder, and other investors, according to TechCrunch. It's looking to soon launch in Brooklyn, New York, a city it chose based the number of local small businesses that use services like etsy and other platforms that require shipping.
Founded in 2014, ShipBob helps small businesses ship their items more easily. Via the ShipBob smartphone app, users take a picture of what they want shipped, note where and how they want it shipped, and a ShipBob agent will pick it up, package it, and mail it out. ShipBob eliminates the need of manually mailing items and waiting in at the post office.
ShipBob currently isn't charging for pickups or packaging, and it's making money by the savings it receives by routing items through EasyPost, the startup told TechCrunch. It's also making money from businesses that want to hold inventory at ShipBob's warehouse.
Last year ShipBob went through Y Combinator, a prestigious accelerator program in Silicon Valley. The company wrote in a blog post last month that their investors questioned the decision to choose Chicago over the West Coast, but ultimately the Windy City provided a better fit for their growing business, the company said.
"If we can make ShipBob work in Chicago, we could make it work in any other city in the country," the startup wrote. "San Francisco has an eco-system which is unique to itself. There are numerous examples of companies which flourished in the valley but failed to find any traction anywhere else. On the other hand, companies like Belly, Grub Hub , Groupon started right in Chicago and quickly expanded to other parts of the country. We just couldn’t give up on the opportunity of being in the latter list of companies launched in Chicago."
Image via Doejo
