DC Startup: Swapel Is Bartering For Startups And Small Businesses INTERVIEW

Swapel, Washington DC Startup,startup,startups,bartering startup,founder interview,craigslist,pando daily,betabeat,techcrunchWashington DC startup Swapel is all about bartering. It’s a different kind of bartering though, it’s bringing back the old b2b bartering network system that was popular in the mid to late 90’s.

Nick Barron, one of the co-founders at Swapel doesn’t know it but through both of our new media startups we’ve survived because of bartering. We’ve bartered ad space and social media expertise for everything from legal services, to design and even travel. Bartering is a great way for sneaker strapped startups to save vitally needed dollars.

That’s the foundation for Swapel. Swapel puts a layer of trust into the bartering ecosystem for businesses. Bartering is growing in popularity we’ve covered a handful of good bartering startups here at nibletz.com. Bartering on a consumer, person to person level is a lot different than bartering in business to business. At the consumer level most people are bartering tangible goods. I’ll trade you my riding lawnmower for your iPad. I’ll cut the tree branches down, if I can have all the fire wood. When people are bartering with each other it’s typically a straight up trade.

The problem when it comes to professional B2B bartering is that often times at least one of those in the barter or trade is performing a service that may not be executed immediately. For instance maybe you’re bartering legal services for tax preparation services. Perhaps the tax preparer is getting a contract drawn up immediately and the lawyer doesn’t need the tax preparation until the following winter. With trades like that you need a platform to manage them, add a layer of trust and a network of trusted service providers who are willing to barter. You can’t just go to the barter tab on Craigslist and trade SEC filing paperwork for wallpaper removal.

Barron and co-founder Shawn Scott are building Swapel in the thriving DC startup community. We’ve already been through DC twice on the sneaker strapped startup road trip and we know first hand how great DC startups are. In fact Barron says that one of their business role model is fellow DC startup founder Zvi Band of Contactually.

We found that out in more in our interview with Swapel below.

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