Many consumers struggle to find the right item without spending hours on Instagram. To address this, the duo is building the search engine Encore, which lets users search for secondhand items from different sources. The startup is currently part of Y Combinator’s first-ever fall batch.
“The entire secondhand shopping market is really fragmented. There are hundreds of resources out there, such as Depop, Mercari, ThredUp, eBay, Craigslist, and more. It’s hard for consumers to sift through them all to try and get to the product you are looking for. So we wanted to remove that friction for users,” Ruber said on a call with TechCrunch.