This App Curates Gifts From Startups for Your Trendy Friends

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Name: JustBecause

One-Liner Pitch: Send great gifts from the hottest startups for just $1 each.

Why It’s Taking Off: Instead of recommending gifts that your friends might already have, this app ensures they won’t get the same thing twice.

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With Black Friday and the holidays coming up, we’re starting to get in the mood to buy, but what’s going to be the big gift item this year? If you’re the type of person who likes to amaze friends with awesome gifts, no matter who they are, you might want to check out Facebook app JustBecause.

While Facebook recently launched its own gift shop, JustBecause brings a distinction by flipping the gift-giving process to focus on products rather than people or occasions. The app aims to help you give gifts that are the “next great thing,” made possible by its unique positioning of working with startups.

“I think the key difference here is that we start with the gift, not with the friend,” JustBecause founder Matthew Hartman says. “Instead of saying ‘It’s so-and-so’s birthday, you should send them a gift,’ we flip it around and say ‘Here’s an awesome new product or service, who do you think would really like it?’ ”

Other Facebook gift apps, including Shopycat and Bday Gift Finder, scrape Likes or wall posts to recommend products. But this means sometimes that friend already owns the product â€" hence why they had “liked” it.

JustBecause is focused on surfacing experiences or products that most people haven’t tried yet. It reduces the friction of trying out new things, and as many startups know, it can be difficult to communicate your product’s utility without getting someone to just do it.

All the gifts in JustBecause cost the user $1, but are worth between $10 and $100, and are handpicked by the team. Examples include a lip gloss from Birchbox (worth $15) or $20 to use towards a ride from Uber. Once a gift is purchased, it is shared to your friend via Facebook, where that person can make arrangements to receive it.

The company is based in Chicago. They are not looking for funding at the moment, but simply focused on creating a great experience for users (they launched at the beginning of September). Hartman says eventual business model will involve charging startups a customer acquisition fee for redeemed gifts.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, stevendepolo.