IRI has announced its acquisition of CoinOut, founded by Jeff Witten,’10CC, ’15LAW, ’15BUS and member of the Columbia Startup Lab’s first cohort.
Jeff Witten started CoinOut at Columbia Business School after Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad class in January of 2014. What began as a vision of coinless cash transactions transformed into a robust data platform that captures billions of consumer product purchases every year, with a very lean staff of just two full-time employees. CoinOut is now a leading rewards app in the United States that does more than 130,000 transactions daily; the app pays US shoppers for their data, putting extra cash in everyday Americans’ pockets and helping small and large brands understand who and why are buying their products. The app has 1.5m+ members, works with some of the largest Retailers, Market Research firms and financials, and was recently acquired by IRI Worldwide to be the engine of its behavioral platform in understanding the pulse of the consumer in the US.