Rumgr raises $500k from Tony Hsieh and other angels

Social and mobile commerce site focuses on helping you discover items nearby

(Correction: to reflect the post-valuation)

There's something to be said about the serendipitous nature of finding something.

For instance, the other day my husband and I were passing by a museum, and two beautiful antique chairs caught our eyes. They happened be for sale at the museum and though we hadn't intended on buying anything that day, we did.

In many ways, a lot of shopping happens this way and increasingly it's happening in a social way online as more people are able to share items they think are cool.

And, with the quality of images greatly improving online, it's not surprising that e-commerce is moving toward this visual and social direction. Take a look at Pinterest and TheFancy. 

One company hoping to take a similar concept but help you find items nearby is Rumgr, a Las Vegas-based start-up that just raised $500,000 for a post-valuation of $3 million.

Rumgr was founded by three former Zappos employees who have technical backgrounds, Dylan Bathurst, CEO, Ray Morgan, CTO, and Alex Coleman, VP of design. It's a validation on their part that their former boss Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, which is now part of Amazon, backed the company. Along with Hsieh, other angel investors include Fred Mossler, Arun Rajan, and Andrew Donner.

Rumgr is like "rummaging around a garage sale," except you're doing so on a mobile phone, said Bathurst, in an interview with me. "On the buyer side, we have a rummage tab," Bathurst explained. "When you open that, you get this Pinterest style of scrolling, starting with items that are one mile away from you. As you scroll down, the items are from locations that are farther away."

Unlike Craigslist, where someone can look up an item, Rumgr is much more of a browsing experience. Hence the garage sale metaphor.  "With Craigslist, you get the entire city," said Bathurst. "You might find something, but you have to travel clear across the city to pick it up. We’re interested in seeing if people are interested in buying based on location. Rather than people scxrolling through text, it’s a fun thing. It’s addicting."