Kyle
Late last week we brought you the story about Baltimore startup BeerGivr which allows people to buy their friends beer using their mobile phone from a remote location, at participating beers. The concept is easy, if you can’t join your friends at the bar you can still pick up a round or buy the birthday girl/boy a shot or beer. You sign into the app, and let it know how many beers and voila its done. BeerGivr has partnered with bars in their hometown for testing. If you buy a friend a beer and they’re not at a participating bar or restaurant they can have that beer converted into Paypal dollars.
Well an Austin startup has taken a similar concept and expanded it to a wide variety of offerings primarily in the under $10 arena. With NOOM (Next One’s On Me), you can buy a gift for a friend using your mobile phone. Ideas include cupcakes,coffee, beers, lunch etc. You simply send your friend a virtual gift certificate through NOOM and they actually get the gift.
NOOM co-founder Sara Rodell gives us a great use case example in our interview below. Say you just met a great new friend or business colleague, it would be very awkward to shake hands and give them $5 or $10 and say “hey the next coffee is on me”, but with NOOM it’s a gesture appreciated, and used.
Right now NOOM is available in the Apple iTunes store and exclusively for Austin area merchants however they are expanding quickly and plan on bringing Houston on in the very near future. NOOM currently has 20 Austin area merchants participating including bakeries, ice cream shops, coffee shops, restaurants and bars.
Check out our interview with Rodell below