A Small Biz COO App: 5 Questions for Shopventory’s Rares Saftoiu

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Rares Saftoiu and Bach Le have been engaged on the TurboTax engineering team at Intuit in San Diego after they determined to give up in 2013 to work full-time on Shopventory, a tool startup they based to serve small business owners.

It used to be their second attempt at a startup while they had been nonetheless working full-time at Intuit. As Saftoiu places it, they were annoyed and upset with corporate work, and Le had developed a helpful instrument program that his spouse was the use of to run her girls’s boutique in Vista, CA.

the program turned into the basis for Shopventory, a list administration system for small trade house owners that use mobile level-of-sale programs—any of the little swipers like sq., Clover, and PayPal right here that plug into a telephone or pill. “when we started Shopventory, none of the major cellular level-of-sale programs (sq. included) had any kind of inventory management capability,” Saftoiu writes in an e-mail.

Shopventory co-founder Rares Saftoiu

Rares Saftoiu

Saftoiu and Le applied to several startup accelerators, including Y Combinator and Techstars. “We made it to the final levels of the Y Combinator process, however we in the end obtained typical into Techstars” in Boulder, CO, Saftoiu writes.

“It was once at this point we determined to pursue Shopventory full-time. We formally included in may just 2013, right earlier than the start of our Techstars

Shopventory co-founder Bach Le

Bach Le

program.”

Dave Carlson, one in all their lead mentors at Techstars, joined the Shopventory workforce a couple of months later as a co-founder and CEO.

This week, Shopventory is formally introducing a new product, Thrive. “Thrive displays you at a look how what you are promoting is doing,” Saftoiu writes.

Shopventory co-founder and CEO Dave Carlson

Dave Carlson

“It’s the heartbeat of your business in the palm of your hand. We tie in to all of the products and services small business house owners use (level-of-sale techniques, e-mail marketing campaign software, social media, accounting), pull in the entire information, crunch the numbers, and show you essential stats.”

“all the giant firms,” he continues, “have groups of people that offer those varieties of analytics, however the small industry owner is busy sufficient just seeking to run his save and doesn’t have time to crunch the numbers (or talk to his accountant frequently sufficient). We degree the playing field.”

Saftoiu, who’s Shopventory’s chief advertising and marketing officer, answered a few questions from Xconomy, which were condensed and edited for readability:

Xconomy: How did you fund the corporate?

Rares Saftoiu: We funded the company with a seed round from angel traders. We graduated from Techstars in August 2013, and closed our spherical in October. We in the beginning raised $ 1 million, with a up to date high-off of every other $ 400,000 that simply closed a few months ago.

X: How is Thrive totally different from your original Shopventory app?

RS: We went through Techstars with our shopventory.com product. About 9 months out of Techstars (we graduated in August 2013), square brought stock management and partnered with stitch Labs, certainly one of our main rivals. We also had a really onerous time working with PayPal. despite many conferences and having … next web page »

Xconomy

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