Participated · Series A · May 2023

Checkmate offers a free iPhone app (with a Safari mobile extension and desktop availability) that pulls shopping into one place, finds promo codes, extracts codes from email, and provides live order updates and package tracking. The app claims to save users money across 40,000 online stores and to find discounts that deliver “2x more than the competition.” The company reports rapid user growth, hitting No. 1 in the Apple App Store late last year and surpassing over 400,000 users, including 60,000 daily active users, plus 600,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram. Checkmate monetizes via an affiliate model, taking roughly 1%–7% of a purchase depending on retailer and item. Founded in late 2021 by Harry Dixon (CEO), Rory Garton-Smith (CTO) and Elliot Rampono, the team says it plans to build a personalized end-to-end shopping assistant and evolve into a marketing platform for large online stores. Checkmate provides a dashboard that aggregates discount codes, gift cards and personalized offers from users' inboxes and auto-applies them at checkout, and it creates a ‘ghost email inbox’ to tap into mailing lists without spamming users' primary inboxes. The product also includes package tracking and gift card management. Checkmate monetizes by being remunerated by brands for converting purchases and positions itself as a conversion engine for retailers. The company launched its product over the summer with 200 customers and has grown to over 1,000 users; customers use the product about five times per week and save on average 27% on orders. The team plans to deploy the new funding into product development, customer growth, and additional brand partnerships, and has launched an ambassador program across 10 colleges. Founders Harry Dixon, Rory Garton-Smith and Elliot Rampono are leading the company’s expansion efforts.