Postmates’ founder’s new app TipTop gives prompt money on your stuff

When TechCrunch’s former editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino joined a startup, we knew it was one that may pique our curiosity. Panzarino, well-known amongst TC employees as an avid collector of every little thing from sneakers to novel cooking home equipment to iPhones, lately grew to become the most recent addition at TipTop, a brand new startup from Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann. The app, which incorporates prompt money gives and pickup, guarantees a better approach to promote your stuff.

Such “stuff” is one thing Panzarino would know a bit about, having as soon as joked to employees that “shoes are my retirement fund.” However TipTop at this time largely focuses on the buyer electronics class, not collectors’ objects, providing prompt payouts for issues like smartphones, iPads, computer systems, sport methods, cameras, and extra.

Lehmann tells TechCrunch the concept was initially sparked by a want to scrub out an overstuffed storage, however he then narrowed on the concept of client electronics, as they’d a extra predictable value decay over time. Over a yr and a half in the past, TipTop’s workforce started monitoring 50,000 client merchandise — largely electronics — after which used that information to foretell what the objects can be value after 6, 12, 18, and 24 months.

“We’ve gotten really good at it,” Lehmann says, including that in addition they got here to grasp there are two values related to an merchandise — the value that somebody is keen to promote for and the value at which another person is keen to purchase.

Picture Credit: TipTop

That led to TipTop’s first product, TipTop Money, which makes it simple to promote the objects you personal. The system works equally to Shopify’s Store app’s supply monitoring characteristic, in that you just additionally join your Gmail account (or quickly, different emails) and optionally your Amazon account. That is finished by way of TipTop’s cellular app, currently available on iOS only. The method permits TipTop to entry your buy information by means of digital receipts. From there, it creates an in-app catalog of the objects you’re recognized to have bought and the money provide you may obtain by promoting them by way of TipTop.

If you’re able to promote, you may both drop the merchandise off at a UPS Retailer or have an Uber courier come choose it up. The latter is constructed on Postmates’ supply API, now Uber’s API — one thing that Apple nonetheless makes use of to energy deliveries within the U.S. (Uber finalized its $2.65 billion Postmates acquisition in 2020.)

“TipTop Cash works like a reverse Postmates,” Lehmann explains. “Postmates made it super easy to get the best of the city into your house. And TipTop Cash makes it incredibly easy to get things that you own out of your house.”

Picture Credit: TipTop

Whereas the founder admits that sellers may get extra for his or her merchandise in the event that they dealt with the gross sales themselves, he believes the comfort of the moment money provide will attraction to shoppers who don’t have the time or inclination to take action.

In a single afternoon, you could possibly unload previous telephones, tablets, laptops, cameras, or gaming methods, and make a little bit of change with little trouble. Evaluate that to the extra difficult technique of promoting on a market like eBay or Fb — the latter the place individuals typically spam you with lowball gives or are no-shows at pickup. There are security issues round interacting with strangers by way of the web as effectively, which is why many native purchase and commerce marketplaces recommend assembly individuals in public locations, not at house, which is much less handy.

Because the app’s launch in September, TipTop Money has cataloged $50 million in complete receipt worth amongst its customers, Lehmann says.

Subsequent week, TipTop will add push notifications to proactively encourage customers to promote when the value is correct. Later, it’ll additionally add a digital camera characteristic that can assist you to level the app at objects you personal or scan paper receipts to get money gives, as effectively. (Attributable to greater fraud dangers, these will not be prompt money gives, nonetheless.)

Picture Credit: TipTop

Serving to shoppers promote their stuff is just one a part of TipTop’s bigger roadmap. The flip facet to promoting, in fact, is shopping for. It will come within the type of TipTop Pay, possible a separate app and cost gateway the place shoppers should purchase objects and pay for them on a month-to-month foundation. This half will contain partnerships that Lehmann says he can’t but focus on.

“You only pay for the value minus the residual value,” he tells us. For instance, if an iPhone 15 with 128GB retailed for $800, and the residual worth after a yr was $400, then TipTop would provide you with $400 for the cellphone. But when a purchaser wished to make use of the cellphone for a yr, it could simply be $400 divided by 12 funds. Once they not wanted the cellphone, they might unload it by way of TipTop Money and purchase their new one.

“Think about it like an iPhone Upgrade Program for everything that we own or our merchant partners offer,” Lehmann suggests.

Due to Lehmann’s profitable exit with Postmates, elevating funds for his subsequent venture wasn’t a problem. The startup up to now has raised $23 million in Series A funding from buyers, together with Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen is on the board), plus OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, and Pinterest, Coinbase, and DoorDash board member Gokul Rajaram. Different buyers included Scott Banister, Cyan Banister, Nabeel Hyatt, Dan Romero, Jude Gomila, Sean Plaice, Andy McLoughlin, Jeff Clavier, and Vivek Patel.

Co-founded by Postmates veterans Mustafa (Moose) Rahman and Gregory Carlson, San Francisco–primarily based TipTop is at present a workforce of 16 that features many founding members who had been former Postmates engineers.