Buy and Sell Your Unused Groupon-like Coupons on Lifesta [Disrupt Startup Alley]

What happens when that $145 tandem skydiving coupon you bought doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore? Or what if you can’t use it because you’re just bogged down with work? Fear not! Now you don’t have to let it go to waste… New site Lifesta.com has launched a daily deal exchange where Groupon-like coupons can be bought and sold.

Self-describing itself as ‘StubHub for daily deals,’ Lifesta helps folks buy deals they missed or sell vouchers they won’t use. Lifesta manages the entire transaction, from payment to voucher handover. No communication is required between buyers and sellers and if for some reason a buyer bought an invalid voucher, Lifesta will refund them their money. This by the way, has only happened a couple of times. In both instances due to the business having closed down. (Groupon had refunded the original sellers).

It’s not that people aren’t buying and selling daily deal coupons today, it’s that they do it through bulletin boards, which only fulfill the posting aspect, leaving voids for the actual transaction facilitation and the voucher handover. Plus, you also have to deal with back-and-forth emails and phone calls until the handover is complete.

With Lifesta, everything is much more seamless: Sellers upload their vouchers (usually PDF or image) and set their price. Buyers then browse for their desired voucher, pay online and download the voucher.

Eran Davidov, Lifesta’s CEO would not disclose specific numbers, but did say that since its launch in July, the site has been growing 50% month-over-month, both in the number of uploaded vouchers for sale, and in total sales.