Giftit is reimagining the gifting experience through an AI persona called Sherlock which anonymously surveys your friends on messaging apps like Whatsapp and iMessage and shares the transcript of the conversation with you along with shoppable gift ideas.
Hey friends! π
I'm David, the co-founder and CEO of Giftit.
We're SO excited to be launching Giftit 1.0 just in time for this holiday season! Giftit is a social gifting app that lets you find out what your friends want without killing the surprise. Find out how below!
TL;DR - check out https://giftit.social
π The problem - it's really hard to give both fitting AND surprising gifts.
We've surveyed hundreds of people including our beta testing community and stumbled across the following conundrum:
- 90% of people don't share their wishes unless they're asked π€
- 75% of people don't know what to get and don't want to ask π€«
This obviously leads to an information gap between gift-givers and receivers which frequently leads to crappy, impersonal, duplicate gifts or no gifts at all.
In the US alone, economist Prof. Waldfogel has estimated that this racks up to a $20B loss which represents the difference in actual value of the gift and the perceived value by the receiver.
β Our solution - Giftit's social wishlists and the Sherlock chatbot
- π±Once you download the free Giftit app on iOS or Android, you'll be able to select any of your contacts (who don't need to be on Giftit)
- π΅οΈββοΈ Sherlock will then anonymously reach out to this contact on either iMessage or WhatsApp and start chatting with them about their wishes, current interests, etc.
- π From the app, you'll be able to see in real time the transcript of the conversation of Sherlock with your contact and get shoppable gift suggestions.
- π¬ If Sherlock is not asking something specific you want to know about, you can inject a message into the conversation which will directly show up on the chat app of your contact (e.g. "what's your dress size?"). HOW COOL is that!?
β¨ This is a gifting experience the world has never seen and we're excited for you to give it a try!
π Our ask
It's very early days for us, so we're trying to learn as much as possible from you!
We'd appreciate if you give Giftit a try and share feedback through the app or email (info@giftit.social).
We're especially curious about the value you extract from Sherlock and how your friends and family react to it π
Happy gifting!
David
Ooh this is a great idea! My family does an anonymous gift exchange each year so I really like the "Sherlock" aspect to it! I just downloaded it, it was hard to find on the App Store when I just searched "giftit" though π
@calli_fuch Same here! I'm taking part in 3 different "Secret Santas" this year, so I personally got Sherlock's help tooπ΅οΈββοΈ. Let us know how your investigations go!
@michela_keller That's a lot of gifting! Sounds fun, and I will :)
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π‘ Bright idea
Interesting idea connecting social and gifts. I cop out by giving people Amazon gift cards and I suspect many do the same.
As you grow, I think there are interesting possibilities to gamify and grow with network effects.
Wish you the best.
@rajeshkan72 Totally! I don't wanna tell you the amount of times I've received gifts I want to dump in the trash or as impersonal as some cash in an envelope...
let's hope Sherlock serves as a good growth engine and we'll be able to do a lot of interesting things, stay tuned!
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Can it tell the best place to buy these gifts with the competitive pricing and discounts? Love the idea and I have seen something like this before but that wasn't very friendly like this one. Congratulations!
Hey David @davidalonso Great stuff. Congrats on the lunch. I've been looking forward to this.
A little challenge I've been facing since the first day of the launch however is that I haven't been able to sign up with my number (Nigerian). I saw the Android update and thought that would fix it but it didn't.
I'd really appreciate it if you have a fix for this... my birthday is coming in 3 days (15th of December) and I've been looking forward to trying Giftit.social for it. π
@ibukunoluwa_shotubo Hi IbukunOluwa!
Ohh that's coming quite close indeed! Could you check for me what version you are on? We pushed an update last week that added support for (hopefully now) all countries and if I check on my Android I can find Nigeria in the country code selector.
If you are on the latest version and still can't find it or get an error let me know and I will try to fix it asap!
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@sirian Thanks for your swift response.
"Could you check for me what version you are on?"
- I'm on 1.2.7
"We pushed an update last week that added support for (hopefully now) all countries and if I check on my Android I can find Nigeria in the country code selector."
- Yes, Nigeria is on the country code selector. And I put my number. When I click {Create account/Sign in}, it just keep rolling and doesn't get past that.
@ibukunoluwa_shotubo Gotcha, thanks for the reply! I'm just tried with a Nigerian test phone number and that did get through for some reason. Let's look into this together in more detail via LinkedIn messages!
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Awesome @sirian. I'd really appreciate that. Running to LinkedIn. Haha
@ibukunoluwa_shotubo Hey IbukunOluwa! Hope you managed to resolve the issue! I'm also curious to hear how you were planning to use Sherlock for your own birthday?
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π Pixel perfection
Amazing work, @davidalonso - you have created something truly special! This looks like a great way to take the guesswork out of gift giving. Exciting news!
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