This Algorithm Wants to Buy Your Favorite Shopify Storefront

In 2014, Keith Rabois co-founded OpenDoor Technologies Inc., a startup whose main product was an algorithm that would determine the value of homes based on data such as the ZIP code and the material of the countertops, then make cash offers to the owners, sight unseen. He’s now trying a similar model—right down to the name—with OpenStore, a startup that makes automated purchase offers to small e-commerce businesses.

Although flipping online storefronts may not be as familiar as the all-American activity of house-flipping, OpenStore is jumping on a trend that has been gaining momentum in the past few years. Private equity firms and other investors have been raising large sums to buy storefronts that operate on Amazon.com Inc. or Shopify Inc., then combining them in an attempt to make them more valuable. The eventual goal of these operations, known as roll-ups, is to take the merged entities public.