Despite much talk of the tech industry being in a bubble, 2012 was a good year for the lean startup. Especially for those trying to make online commerce hassle-free for anyone who didn’t know where to start, with apps like Chirpify and Ketup leading the charge. SellSimple is the latest to the table, but this app has the singular ambition of letting you sell everywhere as quickly and painlessly as possible.
SellSimple, newly and freely available in the App Store, is an online marketplace that allows potential sellers to take a quick picture of whatever they want to sell — be it a pack of baseball cards, a crocheted pair of bunny slippers, or your father’s Porsche — and sell it across multiple marketplaces, including eBay, Craigslist, Etsy, and Facebook.
“Basically what we want it to be is the de facto tool for selling, whatever it may be,” says SellSimple CEO and cofounder Julian Sarokin.
Sarokin, 20, and fellow cofounder Kelian Suaya, 21, began working on the startup nine months ago. Sarokin developed the idea while working at another startup, and the pair formed a business of their own after building up interest with investors and producing a video to serve as the key visual for their idea.
“People could really see what we were pushing and that really kickstarted our fundraising,” says Sarokin.
Thanks to the early support, the app currently boasts $260,000 in seed funding.
SellSimple is entering a crowded field, with the new guard in e-commerce all endeavoring to take on big players like Craigslist in their own way — and that new guard includes the likes of Facebook with its new Gifts effort. But Sarokin believes SellSimple is different because it works with the incumbents. In that way, everyone wins.
Right now, says Sarokin, the app is “completely free to use” and SellSimple receives five percent in returns. A small sum, to be sure, but Sarokin is confident the business can scale.
“Once we get a large user base,” he says, “we’ll be working on our search algorithm and generating sales for these e-commerce companies for commission.”
The app has already enjoyed a soft opening of sorts before its official debut, so new users will see an already lively storefront full of things they may want to buy. It’s a good day to go to the market.
