Swaptree: a service ready to get cloned and upgraded

Techcrunch reports on Boston-based Swaptree today. From Techcrunch:

Swaptree, which is creating a network of users who swap books, CDs, DVDs and video games, just raised a third round of financing – $3.3 million from Safeguard Scientifics. To create a trade the company finds up to four users who have and want items that form a match. Then everyone prints out address forms from the site and pays the shipping (usually $2.50) to mail it directly to the next person.

The first thing I though while reading this was “Someone needs to copy this for Europe”
The second thing I though was “Someone needs to create an iPhone app for it”

I have to admit that all I can think about lately is iPhone apps so the second conclusion is not much of a surprise. But still!

If you are an entrepreneur looking for an idea to go for I would seriously consider this one. People get more focused on recycling, bartering and re-using every day. A start-up like this needs local offices to succeed. Europe is a fragmented market but if you can cross the language barriers you have a combined user-base almost twice as big as the US.

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Here is your template for your new site. I would suggest picking a new name, color and change the text around a bit. But keep the structure because that seems to work!