Chums (YC W21): The Smart New Way to Shop Online With Friends in 2025

Shopping online with friends is the practice of co-browsing e-commerce platforms simultaneously with others, enabling real-time product sharing, collaborative decision-making, and group purchasing through a connected digital interface.

What Is Chums and Why Did It Launch on Hacker News?

When Chums launched on Hacker News under the iconic “Launch HN” banner as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch, it sparked an immediate conversation: why has online shopping always been so lonely? Think about it — when we shop in the physical world, we almost always bring someone along. A friend, a partner, a sibling. Yet from the moment e-commerce exploded in the late 1990s, buying things online became an entirely solitary act.

Chums set out to fix that. The startup built a platform that lets users shop on real e-commerce websites together, in real time, with their friends. No more screenshotting product pages and pasting them into a chat. No more “wait, which one did you mean?” confusion. With Chums, you and your friends share the same live browsing session, see each other’s cursors, react to products, and build shared carts — just like shopping in a store, but from your couch.

How Chums Works: The Core Features Explained

1. Real-Time Co-Browsing

The centerpiece of Chums is its co-browsing technology. Users can invite friends into a shared shopping session on thousands of supported online stores. Both parties see the same page simultaneously, and actions like scrolling, clicking, and adding to cart are synced or visible to everyone in the session. This eliminates the friction of trying to coordinate shopping over a phone call or a string of messages.

2. Shared Wishlists and Group Carts

Chums allows users to create collaborative wishlists where multiple people can add, comment on, and vote for items. This feature is especially powerful for group gifting — birthdays, weddings, holidays — where multiple people are contributing to a single purchase. Instead of a chaotic group chat, everyone works from the same curated list.

3. In-Session Chat and Reactions

While co-browsing, users can communicate through an in-session chat panel with text messages and emoji reactions. Saw a jacket that’s perfect for your friend? React with a heart. Found a price that seems too good to be true? Drop a skeptical emoji. These micro-interactions make the shopping session feel alive and social, adding a layer of human connection that standard e-commerce completely lacks.

4. Discovery Through Your Social Graph

One of the most underrated aspects of Chums is its social discovery engine. Because your friends are actively browsing with you, the products that surface during a session are influenced by the tastes, interests, and needs of people you already trust. This organic peer recommendation model is far more effective than algorithmic suggestions — studies have shown that 83% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over any other form of advertising (Nielsen, 2022).

Why Social Commerce Is the Future of Online Shopping

Chums is not building in a vacuum. The global social commerce market was valued at $724 billion in 2022 and is projected to surpass $6 trillion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. Platforms like TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, and Pinterest have already proven that people want to discover products in social contexts. Chums takes this a step further by making the act of purchasing — not just discovery — a shared experience.

This matters especially for Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, who spend an average of 4.5 hours per day on social media and increasingly expect digital experiences to feel communal and interactive. Chums directly targets this behavioral shift.

Who Benefits Most From Chums?

• Long-distance friends and couples who want to shop together despite being in different cities or countries.
• Gift-givers and group gifting organizers who need a shared, organized space to coordinate purchases.
• Fashion and lifestyle enthusiasts who value the opinions of their social circle before making a purchase.
• Parents shopping with adult children for big-ticket items like electronics or furniture.

Smart Life Tips: How to Get the Most Out of Social Shopping

Set a Budget Before You Start

Co-browsing with friends is fun, but it can also be contagious. When a friend gets excited about a product, you might too. Always enter a shared shopping session with a clear personal budget in mind to avoid impulse spending.

Use Shared Wishlists for Gift Planning Early

Don’t wait until a week before a birthday. Start a shared Chums wishlist months in advance and keep adding to it. This gives your group time to compare options, find deals, and split costs comfortably.

Leverage the Social Layer for Research

Use Chums sessions not just to buy, but to research. Your friends may spot things in product descriptions, reviews, or sizing charts that you missed — making the session a powerful collective due-diligence tool.

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The YC Stamp: Why It Matters for Chums

Being part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch is no small feat. YC has an acceptance rate of under 2%, and alumni include companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit. The YC backing signals strong fundamentals, a clear vision, and a team capable of scaling. For users, it means Chums is built with Silicon Valley-grade product discipline and has access to a world-class network of mentors, investors, and potential partners.

Final Thoughts: Is Chums Worth Trying?

If you’ve ever wished you could recreate the magic of a shopping trip with your best friend — but online — Chums is built exactly for you. It’s a thoughtful, well-executed answer to a real gap in the e-commerce world. As social commerce continues its explosive growth, platforms like Chums are likely to become a standard part of how we buy things online. Get in early, explore it with your circle, and rediscover the joy of shopping as a shared experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chums (YC W21)?

Chums is a Y Combinator-backed social shopping platform that allows users to browse and shop on e-commerce websites together with friends in real time, featuring co-browsing, shared wishlists, group carts, and in-session chat.

How does Chums make online shopping social?

Chums uses co-browsing technology to sync a shopping session between multiple users, so everyone sees the same product pages simultaneously, can react to items, chat in real time, and add products to a shared cart or wishlist.

Is Chums free to use?

Chums was launched as a free platform for end users, with the business model focused on partnerships with retailers and potentially affiliate-based revenue, though specific pricing tiers may evolve as the product grows.

What types of online stores does Chums support?

Chums was designed to work across a wide range of popular e-commerce websites, allowing users to co-browse major retailers in categories like fashion, electronics, home goods, and more without being locked into a single marketplace.

Why is social commerce growing so fast in 2025?

Social commerce is booming because modern consumers — especially Gen Z and Millennials — prefer discovery and purchasing experiences that feel communal and peer-driven. The global social commerce market is projected to exceed $6 trillion by 2030, driven by platforms that merge shopping with social interaction.