Postmates’ founder’s brandnew app TipTop do business in fast money to your stuff

When TechCrunch’s former editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino joined a startup, we knew it used to be one that will pique our pastime. Panzarino, leading amongst TC workforce as an avid collector of the entirety from footwear to booklet cooking home equipment to iPhones, just lately was the unedited addition at TipTop, a brandnew startup from Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann. The app, which incorporates fast money do business in and pickup, guarantees an more uncomplicated strategy to promote your stuff.

Such “stuff” is one thing Panzarino would know slightly about, having as soon as joked to workforce that “shoes are my retirement fund.” However TipTop these days in large part makes a speciality of the shopper electronics section, now not creditors’ pieces, providing fast payouts for such things as smartphones, iPads, computer systems, recreation programs, cameras, and extra.

Lehmann tells TechCrunch the theory used to be initially sparked by means of a want to wash out an overstuffed storage, however he nearest narrowed at the concept of client electronics, as that they had a extra predictable worth decay over day. Over a day and a part in the past, TipTop’s staff started monitoring 50,000 client merchandise — most commonly electronics — and nearest impaired that knowledge to are expecting what the pieces could be virtue next 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 associated fee that any person is keen to promote for and the associated fee at which any person else is keen to shop for.

That ended in TipTop’s first product, TipTop Money, which makes it simple to promote the pieces you personal. The machine works in a similar way to Shopify’s Store app’s supply monitoring trait, in that you just additionally secured your Gmail account (or quickly, alternative emails) and optionally your Amazon account. That is completed via TipTop’s cell app, currently available on iOS only. The method permits TipTop to get right of entry to your acquire knowledge by the use of virtual receipts. From there, it creates an in-app catalog of the pieces you might be identified to have bought and the money do business in you’ll obtain by means of promoting them via TipTop.

While you’re in a position to promote, you’ll both let fall the object off at a UPS Gather or have an Uber courier come pick out it up. The utmost 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.”

Symbol Credit: TipTop

Generation the founder admits that dealers may just get extra for his or her merchandise in the event that they treated the gross sales themselves, he believes the ease of the moment money do business in will attraction to shoppers who don’t have the day or inclination to take action.

In a single afternoon, it’s essential dump used telephones, pills, pc, cameras, or gaming programs, and manufacture slightly of alternate with modest bother. Examine that to the extra difficult procedure of marketing on a market like eBay or Fb — the utmost the place folk ceaselessly junk mail you with lowball do business in or are no-shows at pickup. There are protection considerations round interacting with strangers by the use of the web as smartly, which is why many native purchase and industry marketplaces counsel assembly folk in crowd playgrounds, now not at house, which is much less handy.

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

After day, TipTop will upload push notifications to proactively inspire customers to promote when the associated fee is correct. Nearest, it is going to additionally upload a digital camera trait that may let you level the app at pieces you personal or scan paper receipts to get money do business in, as smartly. (Because of upper fraud dangers, those will not be fast money do business in, on the other hand.)

Symbol Credit: TipTop

Serving to shoppers promote their stuff is just one a part of TipTop’s higher roadmap. The turn aspect to promoting, after all, is purchasing. This may occasionally come within the mode of TipTop Pay, most likely a isolated app and fee gateway the place shoppers can buy pieces and pay for them on a per month foundation. This section will contain partnerships that Lehmann says he can’t but talk about.

“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 next a day used to be $400, nearest TipTop would come up with $400 for the telephone. But when a purchaser sought after to significance the telephone for a day, it could simply be $400 divided by means of 12 bills. Once they not wanted the telephone, they might dump it via TipTop Money and purchase their brandnew 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 a success walk with Postmates, elevating budget for his later undertaking wasn’t a problem. The startup to time has raised $23 million in Series A funding from buyers, together with Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen is at the board), plus OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, and Pinterest, Coinbase, and DoorDash board member Gokul Rajaram. Alternative buyers integrated Scott Banister, Cyan Banister, Nabeel Hyatt, Dan Romero, Jude Gomila, Sean Plaice, Andy McLoughlin, Jeff Clavier, and Vivek Patel.

Co-founded by means of Postmates veterans Mustafa (Moose) Rahman and Gregory Carlson, San Francisco–primarily based TipTop is recently a staff of 16 that comes with many creation participants who had been former Postmates engineers.