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Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff
- theswapdaddy 14y agoHi! This is Adam and Pulkit, the co-founders of Swapidy. We've been tirelessly working on this for a while and hope you'll check it out and give us some feedback. Right now we're only buying and selling limited products but we plan to expand our category line based on demand. If you're in the bay area, there's a good chance that we will hand-deliver your device the day you purchase it and it would be our pleasure to talk to you in person for a few minutes.
- argumentum 14y agoCongrats on launching guys! I've known the founders for a while.. Extremely talented and persuasive 18 year old college dropouts, check out their team bios.
- TMKhanK2 14y agoCongrads on the Relaunch guys Great work from the Under20 network Good luck guys =)
- Juca 14y agoAwesome Guys! I know personally Adam & Pulkit, both 18 year old Stanford & Upen dropouts..Extremely Hard-workers and Talented! May the force be with you my young Padawans!
- aashay 14y agoThis looks really neat, but I've got some comments/questions: * Typo when trying to set up a sale of a Late 2010 MacBook air: Choose your product's "condtion" * Where do the prices come from? Are they competitive with other trading sites? For example, a "MacAir 13' Late2010 1.86GHZ 2GB RAM 128 Flash" in "Good" condition goes for $407 on Gazelle, but h3750 ($375?) on Swapidy. However, Gazelle does give me the option to include my power adapter and specify that I have a working battery. * Why honey? Why not real money? Edit: Formatting Edit2: Clarity
- RaphiePS 14y agoI'm also curious about the choice of virtual currency. From perusing their FAQ, it seems like you can buy Honey with real money, but it doesn't look like you can get your money back out. Ick.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoAt the moment, we're not offering redemption of Honey but we may consider it in the future. The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway. Also, if your product is worth as much as a product we're selling, you won't have to pay a single dime. -Adam
- ktsmith 14y ago> The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway. This is only true if the difference between the sold item and bought item(s) is small. If the seller is looking to offload a macbook but only to buy an iPad a cash transaction would make significantly more sense. In this system the difference in values is tied up in honey which has no value outside of the system. With cash the seller can apply their remaining funds to anything they want. I would imagine that even though the "value" of honey supplied to sellers is more than what they might be able to obtain in a cash transaction that extra honey is actually worth next to nothing as it sits in the sellers account unused.
- RaphiePS 14y agoAnother downside is that your money is tied up in a company that could fail. In the event that Swapidy goes under, there's no guarantee that you could get all your money out safely. I think Swapidy is a great idea -- a dynamically-priced, peer-driven marketplace sounds awesome. But the currency lock-in seems very sketchy.
- 14y ago
- ef4 14y agoSo money can be converted into honey, but honey cannot be converted into money. How does that not make this strictly less useful than transacting in good old money?
- theswapdaddy 14y agoWith Honey, we can offer you more instead of what Gazelle or eBay would offer you. Ex) Instead of selling your iPhone for $400, we could give you $440 in some cases. Does that answer your question? -Adam
- dot 14y agoBut you also charge more for the new stuff... Craigslist is still the best way to sell popular items. You get cash right away, there are zero fees and you don't have to deal with packaging and shipping. Hard to compete with.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoWe charge under retail for most items and all of them are brand new in box. On Craigslist, you have the hassle of going to pick up money and then meeting up with the person to do the transaction. Swapidy is a b2c business. We buy stuff from you and pay you on the spot. So as soon as you checkout, you already have your currency waiting for you. You can order whatever you want immediately and we'll ship it out to you as soon as we receive yours. There are no transaction fees on Swapidy. There aren't even any shipping costs. We generate the labels for you free of charge both for selling and buying. So when you sell something to us, all you do is affix the prepaid shipping label on the box, and drop it in your mailbox. No need to drive anywhere.
- AnthonyMouse 14y agoYou do understand that would be a pyramid scheme, right? You can't sustainably create currency out of nothing like that. At best what you're doing is the same as what the Fed does when they print money, i.e. causing inflation, so that at least there is no big crash at the end where everyone left holding your currency loses everything (though that is exactly what would happen if your site ever experiences a significant reduction in the active user base, as it would cause hyperinflation until there are no sellers left willing to sell anything in exchange for your fake money, making it totally worthless). But you're still removing value from the credit each of the existing users is currently holding every time you do it. And you've set it up so that people can't get rid of the "money" in any way other than by putting it into the hands of some other sucker who has to hold it while its value drops every time you make more of it. I can certainly see how that benefits your company, but I have a hard time seeing how I should like it as a user, unless I think I'm being savvy by getting in near the root of the pyramid and then immediately exchanging all my fake money for real goods valued higher than those I exchanged for them, and hoping I can make my exchanges before the market saturation point is hit and the free money stops.
- waffle_ss 14y agoFYI took about a full minute (55.82s) to load the page for me. Some things you might want to look at are that your asset pipeline is running in development mode (?body=1) and 130 separate HTTP requests (resources) were required to load the page.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoHey thanks for the message! We realize this problem and will fix it by tonight. -Adam
- theswapdaddy 14y agoJust an FYI, you can transact on the site product for product without paying a single dime (not even shipping), if your item is worth as much as the one we're selling.
- edwardlando 14y agoGood luck guys! Proud of ya :-)
- Deinos 14y agoI am kind of surprised to see all of the comments regarding why they would use the virtual currency. It makes sense. They can offer you more by keeping you locked into their ecosystem. A crude comparison would be a company like Gamestop giving you more for your trade-in if you take in store credit as opposed to cash. In store credit guarantees that you stick around.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoAt a business perspective, it makes sense but I think they are curious to know why the virtual currency is valuable to them. I'm glad you brought the Gamestop example up. Gamestop gives you the option of selling for store credit or cash. If you take cash, they give you 50%. We can offer more than market value because the overhead for us is minimal since we're dealing with virtual currency. The value of the currency never changes and we're always trying to sell for the lowest amount possible to provide value to the consumer. So certainly valid questions on here and would love to answer as many questions you have! -Adam
- brilee 14y agoMaybe I'm being paranoid, but your use of virtual currency strikes me as an attempt to later coin your own currency to "buy" other peoples' goods for free. It doesn't bode well for trust, in any case...
- theswapdaddy 14y agoThank you for your concern. I will go over this with my your co-founder and come up with a way for consumers to feel comfortable that this won't happen. -Adam
- jwallaceparker 14y agoHelp me out here because I don't see how that is possible. If they "coin" more of their own currency it doesn't change the economics for someone who is interacting with their web site. Swapidy extracts value from users who: 1) Send them a physical good in exchange for virtual money 2) Send them actual dollars in exchange for virtual money The founder Adam could create his own user account and give himself a billion units of Honey, but if he spent it all at Swapidy he'd simply be ripping off his own company. Am I missing something? It's fascinating to think about, so thanks for the original comment.
- toddrew 14y agoI went through the process of choosing my MBP to sell: Mid 2011, 8gb, 500gb, 2.7 GHz i7 and it told me that there's no such product. What does 'there's no such product' mean? Should it say 'we're not currently buying that product'? I'm typing on it right now so I can assure you that it does exists.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoHi. You are correct. Please email me at adam@swapidy.com and I'll update you on when your product has been added to our database.
- toddrew 14y agoI suggest you change your wording. Saying there's no such product makes me think I either entered in some wrong information and try again.. and again... or makes me think there's a mistake in your system. Your best bet would be having an email opt-in pop up letting me know it's not currently a product you're buying but I can be notified when you are. (like you just did)
- theswapdaddy 14y agoWell in some scenarios, there are no such products due to people clicking multiple filters in the same category. We're working on making them better and adjusting them to different scenarios. You're product will be added shortly and I will update this thread as soon as it becomes available.
- mrchess 14y agoI'd suggest not calling it Honey. It is too similar to the word money, and can cause confusion. Imagine in conversation... "so you go to this website and trade your stuff in for honey." "wait you mean money?" "no honey. but honey is like money, you can use honey to buy stuff just like money..." etc. EDIT: I just looked the pricing model and it is evokes weird feelings. Any reason why you don't just do a 1:1 ratio? Why force users to compute a secondary calculation. True, it is a multiple of 10 but still a calculation and makes me feel like I'm making a foreign purchase.
- illumin8 14y agoBecause they don't want you to do normal math and realize how much you are being ripped off...
- theswapdaddy 14y agoWe have the conversion ratio posted on the homepage itself and want users to know what it is. $1 = 10 Honey. Also, we are giving users more than market value on products and selling brand new products under retail. The same products would be more expensive if you were to buy them directly from the store.
- mrchess 14y agoIf this is true it would make even more sense to drop down to 1:1 so that users would "get it" and not have to familiarize themselves with a new market. Converting $1 = 10H might seem like a simple conversion, but you'd be surprised how difficult it can actually be for many general consumers. I've seen people bring out calculators to split a $130 bill evenly between 13 people.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoUnderstandable and I think your point is certainly valid. We're testing to see what works and what doesn't right now. If you think about it, people are more likely to buy or sell if the number is higher. But we will only know if people get used to it within a matter of days.
- zhobbs 14y agoWanted to let you know that your nav is too wide for my browser window, and one of the nav items is cut off: http://i.imgur.com/3dORK0Y.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3dORK0Y.jpg Probably a good idea to consider 960 min width.
- theswapdaddy 14y agoThanks for sharing this with us. We are looking into it now and will resolve the issue ASAP. -Adam
- contingencies 14y agoThanks, I just had a serious philosophical chuckle. :) From one perspective, 'Swapidy: Trade your old stuff for new stuff' is a such an impossibly elegant example of Web2.0 startup culture and American consumer-materialism. You guys should enter in to some kind of poetry award as a free marketing gimmick.
- theswapdaddy 14y ago+1
- dools 14y agoAm I right in my understanding that this is basically the same as a trade in deal (for example at a car dealership)?
- theswapdaddy 14y agoYes, but unlike a car dealership, we give you more than market value.
- atsesis 14y agoGreat idea!
- ConAntonakos 14y agoCongrats guys! Pulkit is a driven guy. He felt CS193c at Stanford was the right environment to launch a product. :) I wish you, and your team, the best of luck!
- ankurb 14y agoHow do you guys manage warehousing / storage for all your inventory?
- theswapdaddy 14y agoGreat question! We have a very efficient inventory system that updates on its own as someone does a transaction both when they buy and sell. Currently, we're running out a small space where all the products are stored. As we grow... our logistics will get more complex of course. Feel free to ask any other questions. -Adam
- atsesis 14y agoCool idea!
- prstoddart 14y agoGood luck, guys! This is a great idea!