Requirement, a platform that is both a rewards app and a social network, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The startup is on a mission to make shopping fun, rewarding and social. The app went into invite-only beta in January and is currently focused on university and college students in Boston.
With Claim, users and their friends can earn cash, exchange rewards and even redeem them together. The platform is a social network that aims to focus on real value and community experiences instead of manufactured content and reposts.
The startup was founded by CEO Sam Obletz and CTO Tap Stephenson in November 2021. The duo met when they were roommates at Yale and came up with the idea for Claim when they reunited at Harvard business school. Obletz and Stephenson first started by thinking about what it means to have something digital.
“We started Claim because we were really interested in what it means to own something online,” Stephenson told TechCrunch in an interview. “We saw that in web3 and we see it in sports, which are collectibles. There have always been places where you can own something online, but there hasn’t been a generalized form of it. And so we began to ask: What would it mean to remove all friction to actually own something online? And that over time led to the claim.”
The pair started by envisioning a platform where you can earn rewards that can be used in the real world and are linked to your credit card. They then decided that users should be able to use the rewards with their friends or trade them. As they came up with these ideas, Obletz and Stephenson realized that they were starting a social mechanism that does not widely exist today.
Claim brings consumers a new kind of value-based experience that is somewhat similar to the concept of trading cards, but for brands. The startup says it has turned consumer rewards into a multiplayer game, allowing users to have new experiences together while saving money.
Image Credits: Claim / Claim co-founders Sam Obletz and Tap Stephenson
If you love a brand and your friend hasn’t checked it out yet, you can send them a special reward, like a free acai bowl from your favorite coffee shop or a t-shirt from your favorite streetwear brand. You can exchange rewards, try new places together and earn status from spending on brands. Claim also does a “drop” once a week where users unwrap a new reward at once. Users can decide to redeem the reward, donate it or trade it with friends.
While Claim aims to be beneficial for consumers, the startup is also focused on helping marketers and brands reach new customers in a way that doesn’t involve bombarding them with ads on Google, Instagram and TikTok. By claim, consumers discover brands through rewards from friends. The startup believes that the ability to actually try a product is more beneficial than an advertisement when trying to reach new customers.
“We’re making it a lot easier for merchants,” Obletz said. “We can find customers based on where they shop and where their friends shop. If they haven’t been before, we can give them a reward for trying their brand for the first time, which is super critical because we’re bringing in real new customers and we can show them how effective that reward was based on spend. And so, it’s just this incredibly simple marketing tool that we’ve created.”
The startup currently works with merchants ranging from Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo to local restaurants like Life Alive in Boston.
Claim’s early results have been promising, as it says one partner on its platform achieved 97% of its new customer target in half the expected time, while another acquired customers with a repeat rate of 35% within 30 days.
Currently, the claim is focused on Gen Z as its entire user base because it believes this group cares about authenticity and is sick of ads, especially when every other post on social media these days seems to be sponsored. The startup wants to continue testing in Boston, where it currently has more than 10,000 users, before eventually expanding nationwide.
As for the new funding, the company plans to use it to hire new talent and grow its eight-person team over the next year. Claim will also use the funding to focus on testing and learning from an engineering perspective before expanding into new markets.
The startup’s seed round follows an unannounced $2 million pre-seed round led by Susa Ventures and Box Group. The claim funding rounds included participation from 6th Man Venture, Reflexive Capital, A* Capital, GSW Ventures, The Kraft Group and others.
