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§ Private Profile · San Francisco, CA, USA
Mobile app providing trusted word-of-mouth recommendations for local services, prioritizing endorsements from friends and personal networks.
GemShare has raised $1.0M across 1 funding round.
Key people at GemShare.
GemShare was founded in 2013 by Jonathan Xu (Co-founder, CTO) and Maryam Mohit (Co-Founder).
GemShare has raised $1.0M in total across 1 funding round.
GemShare is a Seattle, Washington-based mobile application developer that enables users to discover and share trusted, word-of-mouth recommendations for local services within their personal networks. The software platform organizes personal endorsements for various professionals, such as home improvement contractors, mechanics, doctors, tutors, and childcare providers. It specifically prioritizes recommendations from known contacts over anonymous public reviews to ensure higher reliability. To scale its consumer technology, the company raised approximately $1.3 million in seed funding and employed a team of seven people following its initial iOS application launch in April 2014. GemShare secured early financial backing from a syndicate of notable venture capital firms and prominent angel investors, including Greylock Partners, Second Avenue Partners, and Zillow founder Rich Barton. The organization was officially founded in 2013 by former Amazon executive Maryam Mohit and Claudine Ryan.
GemShare has raised $1.0M across 1 funding round. Most recently, it raised $1.0M Seed in April 2014.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 1, 2014 | $1M Seed | — | Ballistic Ventures, Brainchild, Clearstone, DST Global, Learn Capital, Maverick Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Otherwise Fund, Revolution, Silicon Valley Connect, The Perkins Fund, Union Square Ventures, VantagePoint Capital Partners, Webb Investment Network, Y Combinator, Esther Dyson, Jeff Hammerbacher, Joshua Schachter, Lisa Gansky, Lloyd Frink, SAM Altman, Ellen Levy, Mika Salmi, Rich Barton, Greylock Partners, Second Avenue Partners | Announced |
Key people at GemShare.
GemShare is a San Francisco-based technology company founded in 2013 that developed a mobile iOS app enabling users to discover local services through recommendations from trusted personal networks, such as friends, friends' friends, or interest-based groups, rather than anonymous reviews.[1][2][3] Targeted at busy working parents managing daily needs like doctors, tutors, childcare, home services, accountants, and hairstylists, it solves the inefficiency of finding reliable service providers by leveraging social trust—surveys showed 83% of people prefer asking known contacts over apps like Yelp.[1][2] The company launched nationwide on iOS with 7 employees and raised $1.3M in seed funding from Greylock Partners, Second Avenue Partners, and angels including Zillow founder Rich Barton.[1]
GemShare was co-founded in 2013 by Maryam Mohit, an early Amazon employee who led online experience efforts and identified inefficiencies in product discovery, and Claudine Ryan, both busy working moms seeking better ways to find trusted local services.[1][2][3] The idea emerged from personal frustrations and surveys of hundreds revealing no tech solution combined social networks and smartphones for service recommendations based on real experiences from known people—"two thumbs up from someone you know is worth more than 40 5-star reviews."[1] Pivotal early traction included a $1.3M seed round in 2014 from top investors and a nationwide iOS launch, emphasizing customer happiness to drive growth.[1]
GemShare rode the early 2010s wave of social commerce and mobile personalization, timing perfectly with smartphone ubiquity and rising distrust in anonymous online reviews amid Yelp's dominance.[1] Market forces like fragmented local service discovery—inefficient even post-Amazon's book innovations—favored its trusted-network model, influencing the ecosystem by pioneering "word-of-mouth" apps that prefigured modern social proof in services (e.g., Nextdoor groups, Instagram recommendations).[1][3] It highlighted a shift toward humanized tech for high-stakes decisions, though its footprint appears limited post-2014 launch.
GemShare's original iOS app disrupted service discovery via trust but shows no major updates since 2014; the gemshare.com domain now lists for sale at $77,888 and pivots to a self-improvement platform for 18-65-year-olds focused on mentorship and education, suggesting a shutdown or rebrand of the core product.[4][5] Upcoming trends like AI-enhanced social recommendations and hyper-local AI agents could revive similar models, potentially evolving its influence if acquired—watch for consolidation in trust-based marketplaces. This echoes its founding hook: tech amplifying human networks for better daily decisions, now ripe for a next-gen iteration.
GemShare was founded in 2013 by Jonathan Xu (Co-founder, CTO) and Maryam Mohit (Co-Founder).
GemShare has raised $1.0M in total across 1 funding round.
GemShare's investors include Ballistic Ventures, Brainchild, Clearstone, DST Global, Learn Capital, Maverick Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Otherwise Fund, Revolution, Silicon Valley Connect, The Perkins Fund, Union Square Ventures.