Honey’s growth led to the biggest startup exit in the history of Los Angeles. In essence, Honey was oftentimes able to increase a merchant’s likeliness to make a sale because users loved buying discounted products. Their Head of Partnership, an industry veteran, was able to sign lucrative deals with hundreds of merchant partners.įurthermore, the extension’s continued growth helped ease many of the conversations Honey held with merchants. With the added cash, Honey was able to make a few critical hires, which propelled the company to new heights. Anthos was the one who approached honey and became one of the company’s early investors. One of them were employees at Anthos Capital, a Silicon Valley based VC, who used the app frequently and raved about it to their managing partner Bryan Kelly. Over the next few years, the founders continued refining the product and adding more users to the platform. In the meantime, Ruan, together with a few existing team members as well as interns, was trying to keep the business afloat.īut just with any other notable entrepreneurial story, perseverance is often the key to success. He joined OpenX as a product manager from 2013 to 2015. The lack of funding and income forced Honey to get creative with its cost base – and had Hudson seeking a job again. The belief was that anything in the desktop space was already done and the market essentially saturated. At the time, most of the venture capital dollars went to startups focused on mobile commerce (such as Poshmark). But at the time, the team was not yet making any money and advertising its coupon deals free of charge.įurthermore, no investor was willing to plow money into the startup. Within a year of the launch, Honey was able to sign up over 200,000 users and signed deals with over 100 merchant partners. While the launch didn’t go according to plan, it became successful, nonetheless. The team “accidentally” launched Honey when an engineer, who was hired to help bug testing the technology, posted a link to the extension on Reddit. The app’s launch in 2012 wasn’t as sweet as honey, though. Hudson and Ruan each put $50,000 into the business and developed the first working prototype within six weeks. He scoured the internet for a suitable coupon, but wasn’t able to find any good offer. The idea for Honey originated when Hudson tried ordering pizza for him and his kids. As a result, Business Week named him one of “Top Young Entrepreneurs Of Tech” in 2005 – alongside Mark Zuckerberg. It became the first nationwide digital camera rental service for events. In the mid-2000s, he started his first business named YouShoot. He held multiple tech and VC related positions, working as an analyst, associate, and project manager across various industries. Meanwhile, Hudson, who completed his college degree at Cornell and added an MBA from MIT later on, took the safer route. Prior to starting Honey, Ruan led multiple startups to exits, both as an employee and founder. Honey, headquartered in Las Angeles, was founded in 2012 by George Ruan and Ryan Hudson. Honey claims that its users save an average of $126 per year while receiving discounts of 17.9 percent per order. In case you’re not a fan of using a desktop device, Honey has also developed mobile apps, which are available on Android and iOS. The gift cards can be redeemed at over 5,500 partner stores, including Microsoft, eBay, or the Home Depot. Lastly, users can sign up to Honey Gold, which allows them to earn a digital currency (named Gold, if you haven’t guessed by now) and redeem it in exchange for gift cards. The extension even compares prices across different sellers on Amazon and surfaces the cheapest offer for any given product. Users, furthermore, can save desired items within the extension and be notified once Honey finds a discount for that product via its Droplist feature. Honey works together with over 30,000 retailers across categories such as fashion, electronics, groceries, travel, and many more. If Honey finds a suitable deal, it will apply the one that grants the highest amount of savings. Next, when arriving at the checkout page, click on the Honey extension and let it find the best possible deals on your behalf. Then, the user proceeds with shopping for any product that he or she desires. Signing up and using Honey is as simple as it gets.įirst, you download the extension, which is available via the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera browser. The biggest advantage for the user is that he or she does not have to spend hours browsing the web to find coupons. When the user checks out, those discounts are automatically applied towards the purchase. Honey is a browser extension that scans the web for coupons and discounts.
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