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SwipeGood (YCW11) Raises $500K From Michael Birch And Others

43 points by anemitz 16y ago

philfreo 16y ago
Congrats guys... great product idea and excellent team, I know you're going to do well.
- SteliE 16y ago
  thx man! we're looking to hire amazing people so if you know anyone let me know ( steli at swipegood dot com) ;)
sp_ 16y ago
Congrats. This is an awesome idea, simply because it takes people's laziness out of the equation. It's kinda like that popular financial 'pay yourself first'/'automate your finances' set it and forget it mantra but applied to charity.
jonny_eh 16y ago
Interesting... it takes money for donations for each transaction, but it's not dependent on the size of transaction. So each time you use your credit car it will "randomly" donate $0.01-0.99 to a charity? I could see more people signing up for something like this than traditional "10% of gross income" that people tend to promote.
sahillavingia 16y ago
Confused as to the business aspect of SwipeGood, is it a non-profit or a for-profit (if so, how does it intend to make money)?
- corin_ 16y ago
  As written in this very article: The startup makes money by taking 5% of the donation.
corin_ 16y ago
If SwipeGood can help pursuade people to donate more to charities then good for them, but it's not for me. I already donate to a few charities on a monthly basis, and am open to making one-off donations now and then to others (and do that fairly often). I donate based on how much money I'm willing to not have - i.e. the most I am "able" to afford without it impacting on my other monetary plans. If I used SwipeGood then it would either donate more (which I don't want, and if I did, I would chose to donate more right now) or less (and -5% for SwipeGood), so it would be a lose/lose.
kalvin 16y ago
I average 40 credit card transactions per month, or about $20/month -> $240/year under SwipeGood's average-50-cents-to-charity-per-swipe model. Assuming that's typical, since the average American household donates approx. $1000/year, a SwipeGood user would be increasing their household's giving by 20%. (Swipegood takes 5%) But it'd be interesting to find out if users ended up giving less outside of SwipeGood because they feel they've "already given"-- or if they end up giving more because they have charities on the mind (giving to one cause is unsurprisingly strongly correlated with other philanthropic activities.) Edit: Also, I think it's great that YC is funding a startup like this. I'm reminded of "Be Good": http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
dnsworks 16y ago
Where's the business model that makes this worthy of investing? Where's the defensiveness when any credit card company can (and several have in the past) put together credit card offerings which do the same thing?

43 points by anemitz 16y ago

philfreo 16y ago

Congrats guys... great product idea and excellent team, I know you're going to do well.

SteliE 16y ago
thx man! we're looking to hire amazing people so if you know anyone let me know ( steli at swipegood dot com) ;)

sp_ 16y ago

Congrats. This is an awesome idea, simply because it takes people's laziness out of the equation. It's kinda like that popular financial 'pay yourself first'/'automate your finances' set it and forget it mantra but applied to charity.

jonny_eh 16y ago

Interesting... it takes money for donations for each transaction, but it's not dependent on the size of transaction. So each time you use your credit car it will "randomly" donate $0.01-0.99 to a charity? I could see more people signing up for something like this than traditional "10% of gross income" that people tend to promote.

sahillavingia 16y ago

Confused as to the business aspect of SwipeGood, is it a non-profit or a for-profit (if so, how does it intend to make money)?

corin_ 16y ago
As written in this very article: The startup makes money by taking 5% of the donation.

corin_ 16y ago

If SwipeGood can help pursuade people to donate more to charities then good for them, but it's not for me. I already donate to a few charities on a monthly basis, and am open to making one-off donations now and then to others (and do that fairly often). I donate based on how much money I'm willing to not have - i.e. the most I am "able" to afford without it impacting on my other monetary plans. If I used SwipeGood then it would either donate more (which I don't want, and if I did, I would chose to donate more right now) or less (and -5% for SwipeGood), so it would be a lose/lose.

kalvin 16y ago

I average 40 credit card transactions per month, or about $20/month -> $240/year under SwipeGood's average-50-cents-to-charity-per-swipe model. Assuming that's typical, since the average American household donates approx. $1000/year, a SwipeGood user would be increasing their household's giving by 20%. (Swipegood takes 5%) But it'd be interesting to find out if users ended up giving less outside of SwipeGood because they feel they've "already given"-- or if they end up giving more because they have charities on the mind (giving to one cause is unsurprisingly strongly correlated with other philanthropic activities.) Edit: Also, I think it's great that YC is funding a startup like this. I'm reminded of "Be Good": http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

dnsworks 16y ago

Where's the business model that makes this worthy of investing? Where's the defensiveness when any credit card company can (and several have in the past) put together credit card offerings which do the same thing?