Exclusive - Zipzoom, an Ontario, Canada-based startup building an online marketplace where consumers can hook up with local and/or national businesses, has scored $2.2 million in angel funding from a number of private investors, we’ve learned.
The company recently launched the beta version of its service, which aims to connect ‘ready-to-buy’ shoppers with ‘ready-to-sell’ businesses.
Registered users say submit queries (i.e. communicate what it is they need), and are supposed to get a lot of quotes from local vendors they can easily choose from. They can do so anonymously, and completely free of charge.
Of course, this is a tried and tested Internet business model, so innovative Zipzoom is not.
And of course, everything depends on how whether Zipzoom can ramp up both the supply and the demand side of the equation, which I reckon requires far more capital than a couple of million dollars.
Note that they basically have to convince people to stop using Google or Bing to find local businesses and email them for personalized quotes and head on over to the Zipzoom site instead – good luck with changing consumer behavior at significant scale.
