social-commerce
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@hotel put the deal in your feed
First came the travel videos. Then came the private room rates. How a travel-guide startup turned an Instagram audience into a different way to sell a hotel stay.
ShopHQ turned off the TV. Kept the pitch.
The home-shopping veteran went dark, then returned with a smaller operating model and a familiar proposition: let someone show you why a product matters.
Market Performance Group: The sale is only the beginning.
An ad can win attention. Market Performance Group works on the less glamorous machinery that turns that attention into stocked shelves, paid invoices and another purchase.
Bonfire turned unsold shirts into a business.
A failed basketball fundraiser exposed the risk hiding in custom merchandise. Bonfire built a business around taking that risk off the organizer’s hands.
Evermos turns your neighbours into a sales network
In Indonesia, a familiar face can open a market that an app cannot reach alone. Evermos connects local brands to those faces - then teaches them how to sell.
DealShare made groceries social. The bill came later.
A grocery bargain travelled through WhatsApp and helped build a $1.7 billion company. Making the next order pay proved harder.
ShopShops turned the shopping trip into a spectator sport
A failed store-directory idea became a live shopping marketplace. Now ShopShops is bringing the conversation of the boutique to the complicated business of pre-owned luxury.
Wahool sells the machinery behind the livestream
A host can charm a room. Keeping the products, prompts, promotions and payroll in order takes another kind of talent. Wahool is turning that backstage work into software.
Later and the distance between a like and a sale
A tool born to schedule Instagram posts now wants to follow influence all the way to checkout. Its acquisitions tell a story about the awkward gap between being admired and getting paid.
The Wish List Found a Rent Bill
Fancy once made a spectacle of wanting things. Now the name is attached to a plainer obsession: getting something back from rent. Its history shows how expensive attention can be, and why a monthly bill is suddenly interesting.
SHOPLINE sells the shop behind the shop
A storefront gets the applause. SHOPLINE wants the inventory, payments and repeat orders to work together - and its best sales pitch is the work a merchant can stop doing.
VK built a social network. Then it put a shopping mall inside.
VKontakte turned friends, feeds and fandoms into a market for video, subscriptions and shopping. Its next test is making all that attention pay.
Chatfuel Built the Bot Gold Rush’s Shovel - Then Had to Rebuild It for AI Sales
Chatfuel rode Telegram, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and now TikTok without pretending the channel was the business. Its more useful trick was learning when distribution had broken - and rebuilding around the next customer conversation.
Collectively Built the Influencer Machine Big Brands Actually Trust
The agency turned a messy trade in sponsored posts into an operating system for brand influence. Its real product is not reach - it is repeatability, from the creator brief to the sales report.
Posh Built the Operating System for a Night Out - Now It Wants to Pick Where You Go
The New York startup won organizers with faster payouts, built-in promotion and pages that keep the host in the spotlight. After processing $350 million in ticket sales, its next trick is harder: making the group chat choose a plan.
The Agency That Sent 1,000 Micro-Influencers Into Battle and Never Took a Dime of Venture Money
Mae Karwowski bootstrapped Obviously out of a Lower East Side apartment, turned down a $25 million offer, and sold to the world's biggest ad holding company. The trick was treating influencers like a data problem, not a popularity contest.
The Company That Turned Every Comment, DM, and Review Into a Job for the Machines
Emplifi stitched social listening, customer care, and shoppable video into one platform - and now points AI at the whole pile. Here is how a Prague analytics startup and an Ohio call-center vendor became a customer-experience company worth a billion dollars.
Bazaarvoice Built the Plumbing Beneath the Five-Star Economy
Every star rating looks tiny. Bazaarvoice turned billions of them into retail infrastructure - then began teaching that infrastructure to speak to creators, social platforms, and AI shopping agents.
Pattern Bought the Inventory. Then It Built the Machine Behind the Shelf.
Most ecommerce firms sell advice or software. Pattern buys the goods, takes responsibility for the digital shelf, and earns more only when the products move.
Vendy
Vendy is a Lagos-founded payment infrastructure company that lets businesses accept payments inside the places people already chat - WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and AI assistants. Sellers spin up a shop in minutes with a catalog, cart, automated invoicing and checkout, and buyers pay without downloading an app or signing up. Started in Y Combinator's W22 batch, Vendy now positions itself as 'agentic payments infrastructure,' offering a single API across cards, bank transfers, mobile money and USSD, and reports more than 20 million transactions processed for around 2,000 merchants.
Yezza
Yezza is a Malaysian SaaS company (YC W22) that helps small businesses in Southeast Asia sell and operate through WhatsApp. It started as a tool to spin up storefronts inside the messaging app and has grown into an operating system for SMBs - with online stores, WhatsApp forms, broadcasting, invoicing, and industry-specific systems for clinics, dental and other service businesses.
Etaily
Etaily is a Southeast Asian commerce enablement platform that helps global and regional consumer brands sell online across the region. Founded in 2020 by Alexander Friedhoff, it runs an end-to-end operation - marketplace and D2C store management, social commerce and livestreaming, digital marketing, data analytics, warehousing and fulfillment - so brands can launch and scale on channels like Lazada, Shopee, TikTok Shop, Zalora and brand.com without building local teams. Headquartered in the Philippines with offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, Etaily has processed over 40 million orders and works with brands including Levi's, Skechers, Abbott and L'Oreal.
Hepmil Singapore
Hepmil is a Singapore-headquartered influencer, content and social media agency that grew out of the viral comedy platform SGAG. Through its Hepmil Creators' Network of 3,000-plus creators, it connects more than 450 brands with young audiences across six Southeast Asian markets, blending local humor, culturally-tuned content and social commerce. Founded in 2015 by Karl Mak and Adrian Ang, the group was acquired by Publicis Groupe in October 2025 to form the region's first end-to-end influencer solution.
Edikted
Edikted is a Los Angeles-based, Gen Z-focused online fashion brand founded in 2020 by former Adika executives Dedy Shwartzenberg and Zvika Alon. It sells trend-led, affordable women's apparel and accessories - dresses, denim, tops, swimwear and more - and rose to prominence through viral TikTok marketing. After starting online-only, Edikted has expanded into physical retail, opening flagship stores in major U.S. malls and moving into Europe, positioning itself as a curated, community-driven alternative to ultra-fast-fashion players like Shein and Temu.
Segari
Segari is an Indonesian e-grocery company that sources fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and staple goods directly from farmers and delivers them to urban households in the Greater Jakarta area, typically within 15 hours from farm to table. Founded in 2020, it combines a direct-to-consumer app with a network of neighborhood agents who acquire customers and handle last-mile delivery, aiming to cut out the many layers of Indonesia's traditional agricultural supply chain so consumers get fresher produce at lower prices and farmers get fairer returns.
Zbooni
Zbooni is a Dubai-based conversational commerce platform that lets businesses capture orders, send invoices, and accept payments directly inside messaging and social apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. Founded in 2016 by Ramy Assaf and Ashraf Atia, the company champions what it calls cCommerce - selling through the chat window customers already use - and provides merchants a mobile business dashboard, payment links, and its own payment gateway across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.
Duel Tech
Duel is a London-founded B2B SaaS company that runs a Brand Advocacy Platform, helping consumer retail brands recruit, activate and scale tens of thousands of customers, creators, fans, employees and ambassadors into a measurable word-of-mouth growth channel. Founded in 2017 by adventurer-turned-entrepreneur Paul Archer and games developer Naio Tsarouchis, and certified as a B Corp, Duel powers advocacy programs for brands including Charlotte Tilbury, Lush, ELEMIS, Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch and Pandora, and raised a $16M Series A in September 2025.
LoudCrowd
LoudCrowd is an Austin-based software company that helps direct-to-consumer brands turn creators and customers into a measurable sales channel. Its all-in-one creator commerce platform runs influencer, affiliate, ambassador, and user-generated-content programs, spins up branded on-domain creator storefronts, and layers on AI agents that automate discovery, outreach, and program management - shifting the focus from reach-based vanity metrics to attributable revenue.
Whop
Whop is a New York-based social commerce platform and marketplace where creators, influencers, and small businesses sell digital products, memberships, online courses, software, and access to private communities. Founded in 2021 by three friends who grew up building sneaker bots, Whop bundles storefront building, payments, community tools, and marketplace discovery into one no-code product. By early 2026 it had processed billions in cumulative sales, powered tens of thousands of sellers, and raised a $200M investment from Tether at a $1.6 billion valuation.
Franki
Franki is a Los Angeles-based mobile app that reimagines the restaurant review as short-form video. Often described as a 'TikTok for restaurant reviews,' it lets diners discover local spots through authentic video recommendations from vetted local creators, then earns them cash back when they eat and drink at participating venues. Creators earn for posting, consumers earn for going out, and restaurants get measurable, conversion-focused advertising - a three-sided platform aimed at the multibillion-dollar experience economy.