Campus Dibs raises funding to become the college Groupon

A New York startup called Campus Dibs just raised angel funding for its plans to take the group-buying craze and tailor it to college students.

Those students can already take advantage of the deals on popular sites like Groupon and LivingSocial — in fact, Campus Dibs founder and chief executive Garren Givens said group buying and college students are “a match made in heaven.” But those students have unique product needs. So there are some businesses (like textbook sellers) who want to reach that audience, and others (like a spa or a golf course) who are probably less interested.

Campus Dibs offers group deals, where a certain number of customers need to commit to a deal before it’s activated, and flash sales, where the product has to be purchased in a short period of time. They’re also divided into campus-specific deals for students at the colleges where Campus Dibs already has a strong presence (like Yale and New York University), and national deals aimed at all college students regardless of their location.

The site launched last year. The company says past deals included textbooks from Barnes & Noble, devices like the Kindle and the iPad, and study aids like eNotes. The team hopes to crank out a number of new features before the end of the school year, Givens said, particularly to offer better deals through personalization and curation. However, Campus Dibs isn’t purely focused on academics or limited to a specific geographic, so it should still be able to offer deals over the summer.

The $450,000 round comes from undisclosed angel investors.