Craigslist, ever extant, still lumbers like some forgotten Jurassic leviathan in the fading light of classified ads. But what’s that rustling in the hedge? Why it’s iSwapp, a clever solution to person-to-person commerce that encourages buyers and sellers to meet at a neutral location as soon as the whim hits.
Founded by Christopher Hall, Mohammed Mosayed, Nahid Hassan, and Juan Plata, the company is self-finder and will release a full version of their app in a month. They’ve reached 400 users in beta and they’re looking at about 7,000 transactions in the past two weeks. They won our pitch-off on this week’s episode of TC Radio.
“iSwapp boils down trading to its core – local and in person – it’s efficient, social, and part of human nature. With current systems you endlessly scroll classified ads or forums to find what you want. With iSwapp, you put in the item you want, we find you someone selling that item and connect you two, instantly,” said Hall. “We eliminate the hassle of shipping by suggesting you a safe spot to meetup (including sponsored official iSwapp meet-up spots), and eliminate fear of things going bad at the meetup with a strong profile and reputation system.”
This sort of thing is obviously not new but with enough of these flitting from bush to bush I could imagine the classifieds dinosaurs getting just a little worried about entrepreneurs who are gunning for that lucrative and popular space.