Wrapp: The Future of Social Gifting

We are really excited to announce today our investment in Wrapp.

The recent explosion of both social and mobile platforms offer an unprecedented opportunity for new companies to revolutionize huge markets for hundreds of millions of people globally. Wrapp brings these social network and mobile platforms together to transform the gift card industry and the social expression of gift cards.

Wrapp has the potential to transform the consumer experience of gifting.  Now, your Facebook wall can be more than a set of text messages; it can be how your friends collaborate on gifts.  Moreover, since sending a gift is as easy as sending a message, we may see a new form of sharing culture grow on the web. Wrapp makes it not only trivial to know when someone you know receives a gift, but also gives you the ability to let them know you care by adding something yourself.

Wrapp also has the potential to transform dynamics for the retail merchants.  Merchants can use gift cards to attract ideally targeted customers into their shops.  They can leverage social networks to identify and socially reward customers to come shop in the real world.  Customer acquisition is 100% performance based and potentially collaborative with the customer’s friends.  Unlike the daily deal space, there is no overhang of liability for providing specific goods and services to pre-sold customers.

When Reid & I met Hjalmar and Andreas on our recent trip to the UK, we were immediately excited about their passion for reinventing the way that we give gifts to our friends and colleagues. Hjalmar and Andreas are both experienced consumer internet entrepreneurs bringing their online expertise to transform the experience and massive market of gifting.

The early results point to the power of the model.  Wrapp launched in Sweden late last year, and was used to send over 250,000 gift cards in December alone.  After just three months in operation, over 90% of all Swedes are targetable by Wrapp campaigns, one percent are already active with the Wrapp mobile application, and Wrapp users are sending approximately two gift cards per week.

We’re extremely excited to help Wrapp bring their innovations to the US market, where gift cards are an over $100B market annually.  Reid Hoffman will be joining Niklas Zennström on the Wrapp board of directors.

Adam and Reid

Adam Nash is an entrepreneurial executive with a passion for product and deep experience with mobile and social platforms.  He joined Greylock Partners in 2011 as an Executive in Residence, where he advises the leadership teams of the firm’s existing consumer technology companies as well as evaluating new investment opportunities. His complete profile can be found here.

Reid Hoffman is Co-Founder and Chairman at LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock Partners. He is a member of the founding team at PayPal and has been an angel investor and adviser to dozens of organizations including Facebook, Zynga, Flickr and Last.FM. Reid is a board observer at Airbnb and Swipely, an advisor to Groupon and a director at Zynga, Mozilla Corp., Shopkick, and Kiva.org. His complete profile can be found here.