Too many deals and no way to keep up? Have no fear, MyCabbage is here. What started as a service project in CEO Kris Petersen’s kitchen two years ago has grown into a full blown deals marketplace, complete with social capabilities. What’s more, the company formerly known as DealsGoRound relaunched today after raising $950,000 from the likes of Lightbank, I2A and New World Ventures, plus some angel investors.
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“We knew for quite some time that our product was evolving into something which was applicable across the world of savings and not specific to daily deals,” says Petersen. DealsGoRound was an appropriate name when their business operated on the reselling of deals from sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, but now that they’ve expanded into the coupon and gift card management space, the name became more of a distraction. So how did the name come about? “Deals, gift cards, coupons...they're all worth money, or ‘cabbage’ as we call it.”
MyCabbage will use the new funds to work on the product and build the team. “We're proud to be based in Chicago and love bringing more tech jobs to the city,” Petersen says. Looking at the rest of 2012 and beyond, the product and its community are the main points of focus, which Petersen wants to perfect before moving on to anything else.
This approach goes to show that Petersen knows timing and preparation are everything. When asked if Petersen expected DealsGoRound to grow into a functioning business, he said, “Hell no. I expected it to be something fun to build in the gym while I watched my wife coach 8th grade girl's basketball for St. Andrews every weekend. It was really just one more project along my journey of teaching myself to code.” Having studied business in college, he managed to break into the world of coding as it was taking off—setting him up to turn a project into a business in part due to being ready at the right time.
As for his investors, Petersen speaks of feeling lucky and fortunate to be backed by “some of the most prolific entrepreneurs in Chicago, the US and the world.” Not bad for a side project.
Visit MyCabbage's website and follow them on Twitter at @MyCabbage.
