The Hunt

The Hunt was a community-powered mobile shopping application founded in 2012 by Tim Weingarten. Weingarten, who previously spent eight years at the venture capital firm Worldview Technology Partners, was motivated to create the platform due to the frustration of seeing fashion items in photos online without a clear way to purchase them. He served as the CEO of the San Francisco-based company.

The platform operated on a crowdsourcing model, enabling users to post photos of clothing or accessories they were looking for. The community of users, comprised of avid shoppers and fashion enthusiasts, would then help locate the exact item or a similar alternative, providing links to where it could be purchased. This model effectively created a two-sided network where users could both seek and provide shopping assistance. The primary user base was young and predominantly female. The service monetized through an affiliate model on the products suggested by the community.

The Hunt's mobile app was available for both iPhone and Android devices. Key features included the ability for users to start a "hunt" by uploading a photo, specifying a budget, and adding descriptive characteristics. Other users could then solve these hunts, and the original poster could mark answers as a "perfect" find. The platform also had a "Style Me" feature for general fashion advice and allowed users to save products for later purchase. By 2014, the service had accumulated over 2 million registered users who had initiated more than 50 million hunts.

The company successfully raised a total of $16.2 million over four funding rounds, with notable investors including Khosla Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners, and celebrity angel investors Ashton Kutcher and Tyra Banks. In December 2015, Pinterest acquired The Hunt in a move described as an "acqui-hire," primarily to bring on its talent. Weingarten joined Pinterest's commerce team as a product manager, and The Hunt's service was discontinued in early 2016. In 2020, the brand was relaunched under new ownership as a second-hand social marketplace focused on pre-owned celebrity and influencer closets, with Natalia Diaz named as a co-founder of the new iteration.

Keywords: crowdsourced shopping, fashion discovery, social commerce, mobile shopping app, product search, community marketplace, affiliate marketing, style hunting, outfit finder, visual search, fashion tech, user-generated content, e-commerce platform, social shopping, celebrity closets, second-hand fashion, influencer style, peer-to-peer shopping, fashion advice, online marketplace