Kyle
Bartering has been around almost as long as civilization. Back in the earliest recordable days of mans existence people would trade for the things that they needed. If you had fruit and needed meat you would trade someone. If you had meat and needed clothes you would trade someone.
Bartering was kind of lost for a while, and then barter networks came about. Barter networks were actually popular with advertising in the nineties. Whether it be print, radio or sometimes other broadcast media, media buyers could go through a barter network and trade airtime for vacation giveaways and other tangible and non-tangible goods.
Craigslist brought back bartering for tangible goods at the local level. If you’ve ever perused the bartering section of Craigslist there are some crazy odd ball things out there, and others that make sense. I once was traded a $50 gift card to Outback Steakhouse for just setting someone up a Twitter account and spending 30 minutes showing them how to use it.
So what is Kwiddy? Kwiddy is slang or another name for Quid Pro Quo, tit for tat, bartering if you will. You probably remember the scenes in Silence Of The Lambs were Dr.Lecter and Agent Staring go quid-pro-quo. The doctor helps Agent Starling with the case in exchange for Starling telling the doctor intimate details of her childhood.
I assure you that Kwiddy is not the least bit gruesome its actually one of the better pitches we’ve heard in recent days. Kwiddy is the ultimate online bartering platform. It facilitates the ability to swap goods in person and in real time.
We got a chance to interview Kwiddy co-founder Adam Thelwell. Check out that interview, after the break
What is Kwiddy?
Kwiddy is a website and mobile app where people swap goods and services in real time. The idea came about from what myself and circle of friends/acquaintances had already been doing for several years among ourselves. We now are expanding on the idea.
Example: I did some web design for the gym I go to in exchange for a gym membership for the year. No cash changed hands and everybody is happy. I’ve even done some design work for my masseuse, the opportunity is limitless!
We had a pretty large group of people here in Arizona bartering and trading services and goods for some time so Kwiddy felt like the natural progression. With everyone around the country (and world) feeling the pinch of recession we felt value could be offered by using Kwiddy to connect people to exchange goods and services for the things they really needed.
We have lived in excess for the most part for many years and we are seeing a huge shift here in the states with some great tools to help build a more sustainable economy and efforts in collaborative consumption.
I founded Kwiddy in October 2011. I moved over to the states in 2000 from Manchester England after finishing University and started working for a company based out of Scottsdale AZ. After flirting with various ideas for start ups my passion for Kwiddy grew and I set about building a team of people I knew had skills and I could trust.
Ian Jackson is our Creative Director and we have 2 developers that are working on the site and mobile offering.
We have all worked in various entrepreneurial activity’s before and backgrounds vary from Wirelss Telecom to Web Dev and Design.
We are based in Scottsdale Arizona.
Quite simply we were living Kwiddy. I and one other friend challenged each other to live a cash free life for as long as we possibly could. This meant everything from rent to food. It was a great experience and proved the idea of living cashless could be achieved while maintaining a quality standard of living.I kept my friends house clean and cooked for them every night in exchange for room and board. I did everything from give guitar lessons in exchange for dinners and my friend even snagged some flying lessons in exchange for wed dev work! This wasn’t strictly survival we did plenty of things that most people would consider leisure and we didn’t pay for any of it with cash.
This lead us to believe that everyone is good at something. Whether its baking cakes or fixing a car. You might have old video games you don’t play anymore but a guy that lives in your neighborhood would switch with you for something you do want but until now you have to go and buy these things. Instead save your cash and swap!
We already had a pretty large group of people we had worked with and friends and we noticed that most of us were doing things in exchange for each other all the time anyway. Now we will move to a wider model so many others can participate in our collaborative consumptionefforts.
Ordinary people are feeling the squeeze and are looking for ways to reduce their expenditure whilst still retaining their standard of living. What’s the problem? Cash. It’s tight for most people but many have stuff around the house or a skill that others may want but don’t have the money to pay for. Sure, they could use Ebay, but you can’t sell fresh fruit or a mechanics services on it.. We are the platform to solve this problem.
Bartering is nothing new but we have become so use to purchasing goods and services from companies that it’s been somewhat of a lost art that has really started gaining an audience again in the last 3-4 years.
As more people become conscious of how they live and manage their resources we are seeing a growing shift globally to become less reliant on capital to get things they need and barter and swap to maintain a quality standard of living.
Where Kwiddy and the special sauce comes into play is simple. We create a platform for people to swap in real time right in your community. So if you needed a plumber to fix a leaky drain you can post the things you are willing to swap and what it is you need and someone in your community (or a set radius) can respond right away.
Bartering and various Swap sites are in play right now but our value is in the opportunity to connect people with hyper-local notifications that can enhance realtime fulfillment. Plus we are not charging users or skimming off the top of their deals!
It’s great that Arizona has received such recognition. There is a great buzz here with young entrepreneurs willing to collaborate and the state attracts people and companies from all over the country to relocate here due to the weather of course but also the wealth of talent here is amazing.There is a lot less of a tussle for that talent here than in California or New York so I think companies and startups have that as an advantage doing business here. Plus office space is much cheaper than California!
“Quid pro quo” is Latin meaning ‘given in exchange’. Because the syllable ‘Qu” is pronounced differently in languages other than English it has been replaced with it’s phonetic equivalent.
We are currently working on getting members signed up, doing press and getting the word out about our full launch. We will take a smaller group for the beta in 30 days and then we will open things up for investment and growth.
As a little perk whoever has the most referrals upon our launch we are giving away an Ipad3 as a prize!
My parents have known since I was young that I had the hustle about me. I always had various little businesses going on from about 12 years old so they fully encourage and love that Kwiddy is about to blast off. My mother has always had that mentality of being resourceful so explaining to her what Kwiddy is was pretty simple.
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