Los Angeles-based Flip, a social commerce app startup in the beauty and wellness space, has raised $28 million in a Series A round led by Streamlined Ventures.
Flip, founded by the Iraqi serial ecommerce entrepreneur Nooruldeen Agha in 2019, is an app that seeks to streamline beauty shopping by incorporating social media discovery, user-generated video reviews, and ecommerce all under one roof. The platform also handles back-end logistics — including shipping, rewards, returns, and other customer service operations — for its resident brands.
“Our app is like if TikTok and Amazon had a baby,” Agha told Techcrunch.
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For creators — who can create video reviews for purchases or fire up shoppable live shows — Flip provides metrics about post performance and enables influencers to garner commissions from any sales that they have driven.
Other participants in the funding round included Mubadala Capital Ventures, BDMI, and several angels. Flip has now raised a total of $31.5 million, according to Techcrunch, with funds being allocated to growing its creator ecosystem and expanding end-to-end logistics.
Flip is currently signing 20 new brands to its platform weekly, according to Techcrunch, and expects to have a total of 500 by the holidays. It already works with the likes of CoverGirl, Living Proof, and Kate Somerville. Agha told the outlet that the app was downloaded 1 million times last quarter and shipped out 30,000 orders — a figure he expects to double in coming months.
“The beauty industry, in particular, is ripe for disruption, shifting from influencers and paid promotions towards honest testimonials from everyday users,” Agha said in a statement. “The future of ecommerce will be driven by shoppers and the real-life experiences they share via social media.”
