Exclusive: Canadian Startup Slyce Raises $3.75 Million in Oversubscribed Seed Funding Round

Slyce, a visual recognition purchasing platform, is making quite a name for themselves. They have already been dubbed the “Shazam of Stuff” and just Techvibes learned exclusively that the company’s oversubscribed seed funding round has topped out at just over $3.75 million at its official close.

It’s not surprising that we are seeing big things come out of this Calgary-based startup. The company has lofty ambitions to completely change the way we discover and purchase products both online and offline. The Slyce platform combines the convenience of purchasing, using mobile and e-commerce, with advanced digital discovery methods such as visual recognition, QR and NFC, to give users the ability to identify and instantly purchase products anywhere, anytime.

“The complexity of the platform to engage the entire e-commerce ecosystem and change the transaction from the Point of Sale to the Point of Interest is a huge disruption,” explains Slyce founder and CEO Cameron Chell. “We required a large seed round to credibly jumpstart the project from the technical and customer development perspectives. We are thrilled by the response from investors and the support it shows for the endeavor and work done to date.”

The idea behind Slyce is inherit in the platform’s name. Slyce aims to “cut to the purchase.” Its goal is to remove the friction in the purchasing process to make it dead easy for a consumer to see a product and instantly buy it. Slyce wants to turn the world into a mall and your phone into a cash register. It does this by leveraging the full potential of mobile to let users act on their desires at the moment they occur.

Essentially, Slyce can be summed up in three words: See, Snap, Buy.

Using a smart device, users take a photo of items they are interested in purchasing anywhere they find it. The platform then uses visual recognition, powered by machine and crowd sourcing inputs, to find a match. Once recognized, users will then be able to instantly purchase their discoveries and either have them shipped or, alternatively, be directed to the nearest retail location.

Slyce uses its own payment engine designed to utilize a one-click purchase method similar to those that have been successful for the likes of Amazon and iTunes. The platform will support payments across North America.

The systems product catalogue is populated through a combination of brand identified products as well as those identified by users. It is also backfilled by affiliates like Amazon. Slyce’s goal is to ensure that all requests return either direct matches or recommend similar products to every result.

The ability for users to upload and tag items that they like is a key feature especially for influencers like Fashion Bloggers and speaks to the other side of Slyce focused on revenue sharing. Slyce currently has a patent pending to pay commission to the presenter of an item that is scanned through a mobile phone. This makes sure that all parties involved get a “slice of the pie” and is a powerful tool for brands to tap into the power of social commerce. For users, this is also an opportunity to earn affiliate revenue by endorsing products and sharing them with their social network.

The Slyce alpha platform gained significant industry interest after its February launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The release of the first private beta platform for Android is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. The company also aims to rollout Version 1 of their much anticipated Slyce Social Commerce Platform.

Brands and beta testers can signup for the upcoming private Beta.