Re-’Coup’ing Lost Cash on Daily Deals

We’re highlighting small businesses from around the country as nominated by you, our readers. If your favorite small business is using Twitter to communicate with customers, let us know about it @fbsmallbiz with the hashtag #mysbc, and it may be featured as an upcoming Small Business Spotlight.

Small Business Spotlight: CoupFlip

Who: Phil McDonnell, 29, @CoupFlip

What: A site to buy and re-sell daily deals

Where: San Francisco, Ca.

When: 2011

How: McDonell was working as a software engineer at Google and getting his MBA at Dartmouth when he started the company with Fred Schwarz and Mike Cwalinski.  After finding out that nearly one in three daily deals go unused, McDonnell said the three cofounders “saw the writing on the wall.”

“We saw a huge problem with deals going unused,” he said. “We make it simple, users can sell their deals for a percentage of what they paid, and can buy deals for less than their current price.”

Even expired deals can be sold, he said, for a lower percentage. The site just launched nationally last week, McDonnell said, and has tripled its traffic in the past 30 days.

Quote from the owner: “You can sell your deal in under 60 seconds,” he said.