When you’ve worked on something for over a year, it’s a pretty surreal experience to see it finally come together. That’s what my co-founder Alex and I are experiencing right now.
Today, we’re proud to officially announce that Cratejoy has launched its public beta, allowing the most passionate and unique sellers to register their subscription businesses on our cutting-edge platform. We’ve been working towards this day since graduating from Y Combinator last August. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding to finally take our first big step towards our vision to bring the subscription model to everyone and change the face of modern e-commerce.
Why a subscription focus?
Cratejoy is based on a simple idea: subscription is the next chapter of commerce, benefiting both businesses and consumers.
Subscription businesses allow for sellers to easily forecast sales and prepare materials, essentially solving inventory problems, one of the biggest issue facing the retail industry today. What’s more, the subscription model focuses on retaining consumers rather than only converting them; this allows sellers to invest in the quality and improvement of their products and services, as opposed to just marketing and advertising efforts. As a result, subscription businesses have to build a brand that not only resonates with a set of consumers but also is high quality enough that those consumers commit to a recurring payment. In the end, the overall product quality and experience goes up, and consumers subscribe only to the brands they believe in and love.
Recognizing that subscription is valuable to businesses and consumers, we decided to be the company making the subscription revolution possible. That’s why we’re democratizing the technology needed to run a subscription business, so now emerging and existing businesses can build and grow the very best online brands, all through subscription. That’s something we’re looking forward to – seeing new subscription businesses come to life on our platform, especially ones we never would have been able to think of ourselves.
Becoming a Cratejoy seller
Today, we’ve opened our public beta and will vet prospective Cratejoy sellers through an application process. Once accepted into the beta, a seller could have his/her business up and running on our technology within minutes. With our tiered pricing structure, sellers can choose the plan that works for them. Our model is such that we only succeed if our sellers do, which is important to us because we want to expose the best subscription brands.
When you join the Cratejoy family, you’ll join some of the amazing (and already successful) sellers running on the Cratejoy platform, like A Little Bundle, curated monthly bundles for expecting mothers; Austin BatBox, which has a taste of Austin in each box; Root Bizzle, a tie of the month club; and The Fox Society, which is an entirely different kind of subscription service, providing custom-planned dates for Austin couples.
Now, thanks are in order
None of this would’ve been possible without our amazing investors. In addition to opening our platform publicly today, we’re also announcing that we raised $4MM in Series A from Charles River Ventures (CRV). With our $2.2MM in seed funding from SV Angel, Y Combinator, Capital Factory, Andreessen Horowitz, Maverick Capital, Start Fund and ACE Venture Fund, that brings our total funding to $6.2MM. We’re excited to use these funds to continue hiring some of the best engineering talent in the world to come work with us in Austin and help us continue to advance our platform.
We’re also honored to announce Devdutt Yellurkar of CRV will join our board. Devdutt has pioneered CRV’s investments in next-generation commerce and SaaS companies, and we love what he has to say about us:
“Everything points to subscription being the future of commerce and consumption, bringing exceptional goods and services to consumers before they even know they need them,” said Devdutt Yellurkar, general partner at CRV. “Amir and Alex are going to make that future possible with Cratejoy. They’re founders with a very real, fantastic vision and a true passion for subscription commerce.”
Interested in joining the subscription revolution? Then register today!
