Nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic made on-line grocery store shopping a household staple, Tech Garden student startup Rosie launched the original on-line grocery shopping platform that help create that industry. From a collegiate team in the Syracuse Student Sandbox to what has become an industry-leading platform for mobile and web, Rosie just completed a $10 million round of financing led by Avenue Growth Partners. Join them for a founder’s chat on March 10 at 4 p.m. to hear their story. Register here.
Shortly after it first launched in 2013, Rosie was recognized by IBM as the top startup in North America for its unique ability to provide streamlined online shopping tools, comprehensive delivery logistics packages, and proprietary data analytics. Since starting a scrappy college startup working with local grocery stores, Rosie helped shape an entire industry through strategic partnerships with major retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers across the U.S. It now has relationships with hundreds of retailers nationwide.
Created by Nick Nikitas, then a graduate student at Cornell, Rosie was hailed as a “personal shopping genius,” when it first partnered with Syracuse and Ithaca area stores for its beta. At the time, Nikitas said, “There is no multi-retailer platform where you can go and look at all the things that are being offered in your town. If you go shopping at a store, it takes you almost 60 minutes to buy 30 items. Using Rosie, you can do it in five.”
The original Rosie team included freshmen to graduate students with skills in programming to product design. Cornell’s eLab took Rosie under its wing when it was incubating, and the team participated in Startup Weekend and the Ebay Hack-a-Thon. Rosie also worked with the Tech Garden and spent some time as part of the Student Sandbox there. “It helps encourage entrepreneurs like us to build companies because they gave us a network,” said Nikitas back then.
If you take the ease of on-line grocery shopping for granted, you can thank Rosie. You can also learn from it. Register for the chat here.