The Hunt Secures Seed Funding From Hollywood's 'A-List'

SAN FRANCISCO, April 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hunt, the first community-driven online shopping experience that makes social media photos shoppable, announced today its second close of seed financing from a series of high profile investors.  Among the group are Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary's AGR-ade Investments, Rohan Oza (who made Vitamin Water and Pop Chips household brands), RedOne (the Grammy-winning producer behind Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez), Keli Lee (EVP of Casting for ABC Entertainment Group), Anjula Acharia-Bath (CEO of Desi Hits) and Michael Banks (noted media investor).  Today's funding brings the company's total seed round to $2.7M.

The company has gained high profile investors based on its unique approach to solving online shoppers number one pain point – where to find the products seen in tens of millions of images shared on blogs, photo apps and social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr.  Following its public launch in January, The Hunt has grown to one million monthly unique visitors and hundreds of thousands of active members that have started over 100,000 hunts and found over 200,000 products for each other. 

"Our fast growth is directly attributed to the nature and involvement of our passionate community, and the opportunity we are addressing – helping consumers identify and shop for street-style looks seen globally through images shared across the Internet," said Tim Weingarten, founder and chief executive officer, The Hunt.  "Today's funding announcement from an extraordinary line up of investors further validates the strength and uniqueness of what The Hunt offers its members."

For AGR-ade, investing in The Hunt underscores their focus on identifying technology-driven companies that are addressing a consumer need and are doing so with flawless execution.  Already one of the most active and experienced investors in social commerce, AGR-ade's investment in The Hunt is based on the large market opportunity they foresee and their own identification with the shopping pain point the site is solving.  AGR-ade recognizes that The Hunt represents a major step forward in the evolution of online shopping.

As time spent online and mobile rapidly shifts to sites and apps with the most visually appealing images, the nature of how consumers discover the styles they want to wear and buy is also changing. While the visual web provides for limitless discovery and inspiration, it creates a new problem, which is the impossibility of translating the discovery of a trend or style from a user generated photo into a set of products that match the look and your budget.  The Hunt provides the ideal community to achieve this by making millions of online images shoppable and by enabling its members to provide styling advice to each other.  The site provides a true social shopping experience, allowing consumers to find and buy products based on suggestions from others, in real time and at a scale that only the Internet can afford.

This round of funding will bolster the company's engineering team, support marketing efforts, and provide the necessary runway for continued company growth.

About TheHunt.com

The Hunt is a community-driven online shopping experience that makes it easy and fun to shop for the things you see in photos on sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. The Hunt is an evolution in online shopping and solves shopper's foremost pain point when browsing these sites: where to actually purchase the item in the photo. Based in San Francisco and co-founded by tech entrepreneurs Tim Weingarten and Simon Peck, the company is a seed stage startup that has raised $2.7M in funding led by Javelin Venture Partners.For more information, please visit www.thehunt.com.

Media Contact:
Jonathan Cutler
JCUTLER media group
[email protected]

SOURCE The Hunt