Some hustle required: shopping app Shoppr raises a swift $400K in seed funding

Shoppr, which turns online shopping into a Tinder-like experience, today announced it has raised US$400,000 in seed funding. The investment comes from East Ventures ⁽¹⁾, 500 Startups, and an angel investor. This also marks East Venture’s first foray into Malaysia.

We recently profiled Shoppr’s founders and included the startup on a list of 18 Malaysian startups to watch in 2015. It’s an online store aggregator app that provides users with item recommendations based on their Facebook profile details and what they have have “liked” or “disliked” on the app. It draws heavily on Tinder’s swipe-to-discover methodology – swipe left if you like an item, and right if you don’t.

CEO Kendrick Wong tells Tech in Asia that the speedy closing of the round, which took just a month, was not by chance. In order to get 500 Startups on board, Wong crawled the web for any mentions of managing partner Khailee Ng appearing at an event. “I waited till there was one in a private setting, then got myself an invite to the event,” he adds. From there, it was just a matter of persuading Ng personally.

Getting the attention of East Ventures was slightly more tricky, since the firm had not previously made any investments in Malaysian startups. However, Wong was dead-set on bringing the VC’s co-founder, Willson Cuaca, in to advise his team:

Willson comes from an internet security background, which means his specialization is in looking for similar occurrences – or in other words, pattern recognition. My goal is to build a behavioral recognition engine smart enough to identify what a user wants before he or she wants it, and for a user to be able to find an expensive dress at a fraction of the price based on attribute recognition. I went after East Ventures for the person behind it and not the VC itself.

So Wong decided to take the plunge and cold email Cuaca. Just two days after making contact, the deal was sealed.

“When I received Kendrick’s cold email in my personal inbox, he showed me his product’s traction, and also articulated what he wants very clearly. His decisiveness has impressed me,” Cuaca explains. “He had done his homework before talking to me, and very quickly I felt comfortable to interact with him and close this deal.”

Additionally, Wong did something unusual when negotiating with the VCs – he took the lead and sent the term sheet to them instead of vice versa. “Usually there will be a lead VC who sends you a term sheet, and then some back and forth will take place. But for mine, I decided to lead my own round to make it quicker, so I sent the term sheet, the VCs negotiated, and I sent the final execution documents,” he explains.

Wong says that the funds will be used for “increasing in-app engagement, and hiring several more developers – among them, a Python developer – to improve our recommendation engine and increase the number of brands.” For now, the Shoppr team’s focus will remain on Malaysia, though Wong admits that he is looking to other parts of Asia in the long run.

“We want to increase engagement and be sure that our app is something users love here before we target other parts of Asia,” he says.