California-based shopping discounts app Checkmate has announced a $US15M (A$22.7M) Series A led by Google Ventures off the back of growing to 380,000 users, tracking over 1 million packages, and reaching the #1 spot in the Apple App Store.
Co-founder and CEO Harry Dixon grew up in Perth, left in 2015, had various jobs in LA, and set up Checkmate in May 2022 in New York with another WA mate, Elliot Rampono, and former VGW staff member Rory Garton-Smith.
“I couldn’t be more stoked to welcome Frederique Dame (Google Ventures) to our board and Nichole Wischoff (Wischoff Ventures) as a board observer,” said Harry.
The Google Ventures partner Frederique Dame gave some reasons for the investment, in a statement.
The last decade has seen a boom in e-commerce, but our shopping experience hasn’t changed until now. We strongly believe in Checkmate’s technology, team, and approach to reaching new consumer audiences.
Frederique Dame, Google Ventures
It’s a dream come true for Harry Dixon and team, who knew each other in Perth, before catching up on the other side of the world in 2021 to set up Checkmate.
“We are incredibly fortunate to welcome an all-star lineup to Checkmate, including Mantis Venture Capital (Alex Pall), Black Angel Group (BAG), Common Metal & BDuck Capital,” said Harry.
“Angels include Paris Hilton & Carter Reum, Tim Kendall, Saurabh Gupta (DST Global), Jeff Bonforte, James Chin Moody, Geraldine Chin Moody, Trevor Neff, Arthur L., Michael B. Tannenbaum, Alex Zaccaria & Anthony Zaccaria.
If those names don’t ring a bell, it’s a roll call of former and current CEOs/executives from Honey, Pinterest, Ancestry.com, Rakuten, Google, Grindr, Amazon, Linktree and Brex.
“Thank you for the continued support from Fuel Capital, Blackbird, f7 Ventures, Night Capital & Scribble Ventures – you are phenomenal people and investors.
“Lastly, I couldn’t be more proud of the Checkmate team (especially co-founder Rory Garton-Smith & Elliot Rampono) for all the hard work, to get us one step closer to the next-gen personalized shopping experience.
“I am excited for the next chapter of our journey and I can’t wait to build more great products and support the 400,000+ users on Checkmate,” he said in a LinkedIN post.
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