Tjoos, an Australian startup recently profiled on Pajama Entrepreneur, has been acquired by Internet Brands, a publicly traded company based in the US. Tjoos was started by Bart Jellema, a Dutch guy who moved to Australia only a few years ago. He started Tjoos with a $15,000 investment from his parents. I met Bart in Sydney two weeks ago and he told me that Tjoos is already profitable. Bart has shown that you can start a business with little money, become profitable within a short period of time and have a decent exit. Tjoos has very few staff in Sydney; they outsource a lot of work to the Philippines.
According to the press release issued today, Tjoos (pronounced “choose”) grew by 150 percent to well over 1 million unique visitors in February 2010 compared to the prior year. This growth was driven by the site’s more than 500,000 coupons from more than 180,000 merchants.
“This is a hot area,” said Bob Brisco, CEO of Internet Brands. “Discount discovery, fueled by community participation, is growing very rapidly and will continue to do so. Consumers want deals, and coupons are a massive marketing channel for both small and large merchants.”
Tjoos offers interactive merchant management tools that allow online retailers to customize their listing to facilitate traffic and revenue growth. It also provides a versatile platform for content syndication via Twitter, RSS feeds, blogs, and widgets.
3 March 2010 at 12:54
Tjoos is a shameless clone of retailmenot.com. This guy is a parasite feeding off real entrepeneurs.
24 March 2010 at 19:44
Sedal,
You’re right, it’s a clone of retailmenot.com
but call a spade a spade – retailmenot.com is not an original idea, it’s a copy of other coupon sites that came well before it (just done better).
it’s an odd gripe you have – people have a successful idea, others copy it. that’s business. i think you’re being way too harsh to call them a “parasite”
Copiers can bring competition, choice … and occasionally even a service/product that’s better than the original.
and btw, I’d use retailmenot.com over tjoos any day. I ain’t a tjoos stooge.
24 March 2010 at 19:45
ps – congrats to the tjoos guy on selling his business! nice one!
21 May 2010 at 16:45
The former owners of one of the most highly trafficked websites in the world, ModelMayhem.com, filed a federal lawsuit April 23, 2010 in United States District Court, Central District of California, claiming that Internet Brands, Inc., (INET) which bought the website from them in May 2008, has failed to fulfill the terms of the written Asset Purchase and Sale Agreement.
Read more: http://blog.patyuen.com/2010/05/12/tyler-waitt-former-owner-of-model-mayhem-files-lawsuit-against-internet-brands/