For businesses looking for user reviews of payroll providers, collaboration software, or even a phone system; there is no Yelp, Glassdoor or TripAdvisor for these business products. BestVendor aims to fill that void. The startup has raised $600,000 in seed funding led by SoftBank Capital and Lerer Ventures with participation from SV Angel and Peter Thiel.
Founded in January 2011, BestVendor helps SMB businesses make faster, smarter purchasing decisions through social recommendations. BestVendor essentially aims to be a Yelp or Glassdor for product reviews and recommendations for businesses. Similar to Glassdoor’s ‘get to give’ model, users of the site share and rate a few products they use in their business. In exchange, they get free access to all other reviews and profiles on the site.
BestVendor, which is based in New York, aims to crowdsource reviews for collaboration software, web hosting providers, payroll providers, telecommunications platforms and more. Users can filter by industry, company size, vendor and more.
BestVendor hasn’t turned on monetization yet, but plans to charge vendors based on leads and also offer enhanced vendor listings (similar to Yelp).