ShopSquad scores angel round for retail chat

Social shopping commerce site funded by executives from PayPal, Yammer, StubHub, Skype and more

Social commerce site ShopSquad announced Wednesday that it has scored $1.25 million in angel financing from a group of Silicon Valley-experienced investors that make up the company’s advisory board: David Sacks (former COO, PayPal; CEO, Yammer), Jeff Fluhr (founder, former CEO, StubHub), Josh Silverman (former CEO, Skype; former CEO, Shopping.com), Selina Tobaccowala (founder, Evite.com) and Charles Carmel (VP Corporate Development, Cisco).

That’s a lot of talent from well-established companies betting on one startup.

ShopSquad, which just debuted in San Francisco at Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH event for startups, is a free personal shopping network service complete with live chat, enabling consumers to seek product advice and recommendations from knowledgeable advisors in real-time.

Search for anything on the site--baby strollers, computers, etc.--and ShopSquad returns to you a few advisors that might be able to lend you some shopping advice. If they’re online at the moment, you can request a session with them. If they’re not, you simply drop them a message.

The coolest thing about ShopSquad is that anyone can become an advisor on the site, provided that you have an expertise in some product category. Advisors simply set up their profile to say what products and categories they can give advice, and shoppers will automatically be directed to contact them. If a shopper buys something that you recommend from one of ShopSquad’s merchant affiliates, then you actually earn a commission on that sale.

Amount of the commission depends on the affiliate. For example, Amazon awards a four to six percent commission, while TigerDirect offers a two to six percent commission.

“ShopSquad is revolutionizing the social commerce space by creating a network of free personal shoppers who are passionate about the products they recommend,” said investor and advisor David Sacks.

The company is right: searching for shopping advice online can often be as daunting as finding it in stores. You can never be totally sure which of a thousand ratings you should believe in earnest when they’re authored by someone with just a name and no background. ShopSquad might have solved this by giving advisors full profiles to demonstrate what their actual area of expertise is. The key to this startup’s success is building up its membership base so that you can actually find someone who can help you with your needs.