Last week ScentBird, a New York-based startup founded by Russian émigrés, announced that it secured $2.8 million in venture funding.
The investor consortium includes TMT Investments, a London-based fund with Russian connections, Vaizra Investments, the fund belonging to VKontakte founders Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, and Scrum Ventures, a US-based fund with interests in Asia, as well as Eclipse Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, and SGH Capital.
Also contributing to the round were Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Michael Seibel of SocialCam, Tikhon Bernstam of Parse and Casper’s Philip Krim, Russian tech blog Firrma.ru reported based on an exchange with ScentBird co-founder Sergey Gusev.
Scentbird is a subscription service for luxury perfumes and colognes. Inspired by the razor-razorblade model, Scentbird ships 30-day supplies of authentic designer fragrances in a protective aluminum case for $14.95.
Subscribers can choose their fragrance based on suggestions from Scentbird’s ‘TruScent Recommender,’ which leverages a database of thousands of scent profiles and hundreds of thousands of user reviews. Or, find their match searching by brand, mood, occasion or personality.
With a $6 million run rate, the company claims to have shipped more than 300,000 samples since its launch in 2014. Scentbird is now launching such new offers as discounted full-size fragrances and immediate purchase options for small individual cartridges.
A rich Russian background of ballroom dances, coding and hacking
Behind ScentBird are three Russians startup entrepreneurs who now live in New York City.
According to ScentBird’s website, CEO Mariya Nurislamova devoted her life to applied mathematics, computer science and ballroom dances before realizing her “passion for perfume.” Previoulsy, she co-founded Beta Week, a Moscow conference gathering Russian and US startup entrepreneurs and investors.
Startup entrepreneur Sergey Gusev, who defines himself as an “expert in growth hacking and gamification,” previously co-founded Russian social commerce site SocialMart.
Andrei Rebrov, “a coding Ninja,” spent 6 years as senior developer with Luxoft and other large IT consulting firms prior to joining ScentBird.
The startup initially secured $650,000 from TMT Investments, Dominion Capital, and unnamed individual investors.
Scentbird competes with such companies as Getbergamot.com, Olfactif.com, Pinrose.com and Scent Trunk.
