Decide.com raises $8.5M to expand shopping categories

Decide.com tells shoppers not only what to buy, but when the best time is to buy it

When shopping online, the question is not always what to buy, but when to buy it. Finding the best deals can be a real pain, having to compare multiple sites, never sure if you are getting the best deal possible.

Online shopping startup Decide.com seeks to fix that problem, and will now be even closer since it has raised $8 million in a Series C funding round, it was announced Friday. 

The round was led by Vulcan Capital, with participation from existing investors Maveron and Madrona Venture Group. Decide.com had previously raised $8.5 million, including a $6 million in a Series B round of funding in April 2011. This latest round brings the company's total amount raised to $17 million.

The company says that the money will go toward expansion to cover all e-commerce categories over the coming weeks, but also to hire additional technical talent and expand its data-driven product team.

In addition to the funding, Decide.com also announced two new members of its board of directors: Steve Hall, from Vulcan Capital, and Dawn Lepore, the former CEO of Drugstore.com.

“Vulcan is excited to join Decide.com as an investor,” Hall said in a statement. “We believe Decide.com's Big Data approach to monitoring and analyzing product price volatility is poised to disrupt the e-commerce market and deliver huge value to consumers."

The other member's of Decide.com's board includes Dan Levitan from Maveron, Greg Gottesman from Madrona Venture Group, Oren Etzioni, Computer Science Professor and co-founder of Decide.com, Mike Fridgen, CEO of Decide.com and Hugh Crean, former CEO of Farecast.

Seattle-based Decide.com basically tells people what to buy and when to buy it. It is different from other shopping comparison sites in that it does not just show consumers the highest rated products, but it uses 230 terabytes of data to predict the future price of 1.6 million products that were sold across the major retailers in the United States. 

It assigns products a Decide Score on a scale from 1 to 100 by analyzing ratings and reviews from across the Web. The company then tutilizes proprietary data and predictive algorithms to tell shoppers when to buy with confidence or wait for a price drop or newer model to be released. 

Decide was co-founded by Internet search pioneer Oren Etzioni. Since launching in June 2011, Decide.com says that its price predictions have been 80% accurate and have helped uncover $200 million in savings.

The video below explains how Decide.com works:

(Image source: https://imgur.com)