There are thousands of credit card rewards and other offers out there for consumers, but it can be time-consuming to scour the Internet in search of every single one.
Pick2Pay wants to help with that. The 3-person Bellevue startup describes its tool as a “juicy sandwich for savings,” layering credit card rewards, discounted gift cards, Microsoft Bing Offers and other deals all on one platform.
“We believe that there are savings to be had for every purchase — just not all in one place,” said 34-year-old CEO Srikanth Deshpande. “We plan to change that. We hope to be the one-stop and your first step before you start shopping.”
Pick2Pay, which won the first-ever Startup Weekend at Cornell back in 2012, just released version 2.1 of its app. We caught up with Deshpande to learn more about the company in the latest edition of Startup Spotlight.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: Help you save money on every purchase online or in-store.
Inspiration hit us when … When we wanted to answer the simple questions: Which is the best card in my wallet for this purchase? How can I save the most on every purchase?
Credit card rewards vary by card, the time of the year and sometimes by who you are. The savings and cashback can be different for every online store you shop at. Why should every consumer track these when Pick2Pay can do it all for you in one place?
VC, Angel or Bootstrap: We are completely Bootstrapped. It gives us the opportunity and freedom to test our hypothesis. We have reached out to advisors to help us with critical decisions along the way. We have a well-rounded team with diverse skillsets to build the business and have been able to self-sustain from the first day we met at Startup Weekend.
Our ‘secret sauce’ is: Being able to evolve to meet the early-consumers where they are. Starting from a native iOS app and adding a web-app and a blog-widget for early-adopters all based on a powerful platform that can drive these various applications efficiently.
The smartest move we’ve made so far: Partner with some key players to quickly bring savings to the consumers. For instance we have partnered with MOGL to show “card-linked” offers to restaurants that offer 10 percent cash back on each meal.
We partnered with a Discounted Gift Card Market Place (Raise.com) early in the game to bring e-gift cards at a 5-to-20 percent discount that users can buy and then turn around and redeem the e-gift card to make online purchases right away. We have integrated Bing Offers from our very own backyard (Redmond) to bring all the offers in a convenient form on the map.
The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: Not measuring our lean startup metrics soon enough to understand user behavior on the platform at a very granular level.
Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: We would love to chat with each personally at this stage of our organization before we decide on who. Jokes aside, I would prefer Bezos for his customer focus and the belief that consumers will look for savings in each purchase they make, now or a 100 years from now.
Our world domination strategy starts when: When you call your mom to tell her about your new home purchase and she says — “Did you Pick2Pay today and save?” Think “Google for savings.”
Rivals should fear us because: We are lean and mean and we have built out the platform and integrated with partners quickly and brought tremendous value to the end consumers with limited resources and fully bootstrapped.
We are truly unique because: We are the one-stop shop to find all your savings for shopping in one place.
The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: Building a scalable platform that can support an iOS app, a web-app and a blog widget that can scale to hundreds of bloggers providing the valuable savings to millions of consumers easily.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: Believe in your vision and focus on what you are good at. Those who stick to their vision from day one until the end are the ones who win. The product, the means, the people can change — but the vision remains. Test your hypotheses constantly, measure the impact and repeat the process until you find the right blend for success.
