The world is obsessed right now with what AI can automate, optimize, and predict — and rightly so, given how much is changing. But in all that focus on artificial intelligence, it's easy to lose sight of something simpler: real joy, in real life, for real people. Not every great business is trying to replace a human task. Some of the best ones are just trying to make an ordinary day a little more fun. That’s where Buywander comes in. 

Buywander is an auction-based marketplace connecting value-seeking buyers with returned and overstocked goods from vetted retailers, including Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Home Depot. Every item starts bidding at $1 in a fixed 7-day auction, and every purchase is backed by a 7-day return policy and picked up in person at a local warehouse, eliminating shipping entirely. It's part treasure hunt, part logistics business, built specifically for the reality that most returned inventory is too fragmented, too regional, or too low-value for existing liquidation channels to handle efficiently.

It shocked us to learn that 50% of all returns never end up back on the shelf. Instead, it sits in a warehouse, gets sold off in bulk to a middleman, and eventually lands somewhere far from the customer who might actually want it at the right price. The liquidation market that handles all of this is still largely offline, slow, and controlled by intermediaries with little incentive or ability to modernize it.

That's the structural problem Buywander is solving, and why we were thrilled to lead their $21M Series A.

For us, this is a bet on two things we believe deeply: e-commerce isn't slowing down, and there's real, durable demand for a good deal. What makes it investable now, and not five years ago, is that AI and image recognition finally make it possible to price and list a truckload of mismatched inventory in real time, something that was operationally too hard to do at scale until recently. And once we spent real time with the product ourselves- the $1 starting bids, the constant refresh of new inventory, the unlimited scroll, we got hooked immediately, which explains why their customer repeat rate is ~80%!

The traction speaks for itself. Since launching, Buywander has expanded from its first warehouse in Spokane to eight locations nationwide, with recent launches in Denver and Chicago and an upcoming launch in Minneapolis. This round will fuel further national expansion alongside continued investment in technology and leadership.

We started talking with Jordan and Brock over a year ago, and what's impressed us the whole way through is how well they balance each other out. Jordan spent seven years in the Army before co-founding Buywander, and that operational rigor is stamped all over how the company runs. Brock built his career in finance, and brings the tight financial discipline to match. It's the combination of operational execution paired with financial oversight that we think is critical to pulling off a business this complex at scale.

They've built a leadership team to match that ambition, bringing on experienced operators across data, warehouse technology, and marketing, and adding real firepower to their board as part of this round. Scaling a business this complex, one that touches warehousing, reverse logistics, and retailer relationships all at once, takes real infrastructure, and this round gives Buywander the foundation to build it ahead of demand. As part of the round, Greg Greeley, current CEO of Simon & Schuster, who spent nearly two decades at Amazon where he led the creation and launch of Amazon Prime, will also be joining the Board.

We're excited to partner with Jordan, Brock, and the entire Buywander team as they bring a better way to buy returned goods to more cities across the country.