INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Helping out a friend in need online can be surprisingly difficult
The idea is such a natural one that the company tripled its goal for a pre-seed round, raising $1.5 million from Seattle investors.The
Laura Malcolm present.The problem Malcolm is attempting to solve is simply that in times of hardship, not only do people not want to deal
Malcolm experienced this herself, when she experienced a personal tragedy and found that what was out there to let others help was simply
for Instacart, or Lyft credits
Of course you can donate cash, but you can also buy specific items from wishlists, coordinate deliveries, set up recurring gifts (like
diapers or gift boxes), or organize in-person help on a built-in calendar.These all go on a central profile page that Malcolm noted is
Not everyone has been impacted by one of these situations, but I think almost everyone has known someone who has, and has wondered how they
certainly resonated with me, as I have always felt the cash donation option when someone is going through a tough time to be pretty
figure out the dog walking situation? Give InKind is meant to surface specific needs like that and provide the links (to, for instance,
About 70 percent is that, the rest is those national services [i.e
but as you can imagine that takes a lot of footwork to put together, so it will have to wait.Right now the site works almost entirely on an
affiliate model; Helpers make accounts to do things like add themselves to the schedule or help edit the profile, then get sent out to the
merchant site to complete the transaction there
really add value.The plan for expansion is to double down on the existing organic growth patterns of the site
Every page that gets set up attracts multiple new users and visits, and those users are far more likely to start more pages even years down
Between improving that and some actual marketing work, Malcolm feels sure that they can grow quickly and could soon join other major giving
services like GoFundMe in scale.Give InKind came to my attention through the Female Founder Alliance here in Seattle, which hosted a demo
night a little while ago to highlight the companies and, naturally, their founders as well
Give InKind is a perfect example
And having originally kicked off fundraising with a view to a $500K round, she soon found she had to cap it at an unexpected but very
The final list of participants in the round includes Madrona Venture Group, SeaChange Fund, Keeler Investments, FAM Fund, Grubstakes, and X
not huge in Seattle, either
down and shaking everything out of it
Turns out it was much more defensible than I thought
application process and quality of their coaches, which give lots of 1 on 1 time, for the high quality of the companies emerging from the
