Spocket’s Vancouver team (from left: Tom Hansen, Saba Mohebpour, and Mannat Cheema. (Photo by Stefan van Mourik).

This week, Spocket closed a $1.2 million fundraising round to double the Vancouver, B.C., startup’s team and push further into social media e-commerce.

Plug and Play Ventures, Panache Ventures, 7 Gate Ventures, and Mistral Venture Partners participated in the round.

Spocket takes care of inventory and on-demand shipping for small online retailers. The startup wants to be the world’s largest marketplace for dropshipping, a retail fulfillment method. Dropshipping has emerged as a new way for online sellers to get up and running. When a customer buys a product, the retailer purchases it from a third party and has it shipped directly, rather than stocking inventory themselves. Spocket has more than 15,000 retailer customers that use its marketplace to sell clothing, home decor, and other products.

With the fresh cash, Spocket plans to double its seven-person team to 14. The company is also developing tools to integrate with social media platforms so that retailers can sell products to their Instagram and Pinterest followers directly.

“We’re basically helping anyone in the world with access to a computer to start an online business and become an entrepreneur,” said Spocket CEO Saba Mohebpour. “It’s pretty much zero up-front costs.”

Spocket is a graduate of the Techstars Seattle accelerator though Mohebpour wasn’t able to visit Seattle at any point during the program. That’s because as an Iranian citizen, he was barred from entering the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Mohebpour applied for a waiver to the ban in December. The application is still pending.

In the meantime, Mohebpour received permanent Canadian residency in Vancouver, where his startup is based. In the past year, Spocket has raised a little over $2 million.

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